Kobal, I feel like you’re reading about a quarter of what I’m writing. You’re raising points that I’ve already addressed.
Me:
Me:
Me:
Okay, I didn’t respond to this point. But this point is not true. France and Britain did not have a strategy for winning the war rapidly, decisively and through manoeuver warfare. French and British military doctrine between the wars was that strong defenses won wars.
Yes, there were officers like de Gaulle, Estienne, Fuller, and Liddell Hart who were arguing otherwise. But the generals in charge of the armies did not listen to these officers. They only changed their minds after the German western offensive in 1940 proved the armor prophets had been right.
Nazism was, fundamentally, about conflict. The core conceit of Nazism was that conflict is the natural order of things, that all nations are in conflict, and that the purpose of the state is to win conflict; in so doing, the state demonstrates (or doesn’t) the superiority of its people.
Germany attacking France was inevitable, because that’s what Nazis do, it was just a matter of what order it happened in. Nazi antipathy to France and all things French was a big, big thing, with philosophical roots going back to Fichte and maybe earlier, so it’s true France was SPECIFICALLY detested, but everyone was generally detested.
It is critically important to note, as smarter posters than I already have, that Nazism did not arise from a vacuum; it wasn’t that Hitler came along and was like “Guys, check out my book” and all of Germany was like “Whoa, cool, we were totally into liberal democracy before but this is way neat, fire up the panzers.” Volkisch thought way predated Hitler. Many of the central concepts - German racial superiority, the treachery of Jews, a rejection of liberal individualism, the concept of expanding Lebensraum as a central national goal, and even the (entirely wrong) use of the word “Aryan” to describe racially desirable Europeans - were well established in German reactionary thought before Hitler was born.
Sigh. I feel like the salient points of the discussion have been drown in a lot of misreading and assumptions. I never said, nor did I even imply that the French and British were planning a massive offensive. They PLANNED on a defensive war, as I said numerous times. So, not sure what you are disagree with me on, or agreeing with Kobal on to be honest. Basically, the point is that Germany couldn’t KNOW that this was what the allies planned…or, that they would stick with that forever (i.e. never attacking, always waiting on the defensive). Both the French and British were building up forces as well as logistics for their planned invasion of Belgium, and the movement to the jump off points for the identified defensive positions. Beyond that, they had plans, but they weren’t anything like firm plans, to take the offensive if they could. There were various proposed plans that could be put in play depending on how things panned out. Since they didn’t know how they would pan out, they didn’t do them. There were also plans for limited offensives if Germany did nothing after the French and British were ready. Again, it would depend on certain things happening.
It was all rendered moot, however, as France fell a lot quicker than anyone thought. So, trying to posit that the allies would have stayed on the defensive no matter what based on what was basically a 2 month campaign is ridiculous. Of COURSE eventually the allies would have taken the offensive if Germany did nothing. Even if they wouldn’t have, however, Germany didn’t know that. Once France and Britain declared war on Germany, Germany had no choice but to make plans to fight them. This wasn’t ‘because Nazi’s’, it was because reality…France and Britain were very powerful countries that Germany couldn’t ignore. Hitler wasn’t some mastermind, maneuvering the French and Brits into declaring war so he could attack France, as even his own generals were unsure if they could win such a war. Hitler was an idiot who miscalculated but then got lucky. Had France and the Brits just caved in (again) on Poland, Hitler would have been content to continue moving east, not in fighting France or the Brits. Eventually, I’m sure he WOULD have gotten around to fighting them (or, most likely as I said, he’s just push too far for them to be able to let it go…it was going to happen, sooner or later).
Now…if you have an issue with the above, that’s fine. Kobal certainly does. But at least address what I’m actually saying. To recap, I’m not saying the French or Brits were planning a massive offensive in the early stages of the war. They fully intended, and clearly planned for a defensive war centered around strategic defensive positions in Belgium. This, however, doesn’t preclude them going on the offensive later, depending on how things worked out.
I was pretty drunk when I answered, yes. Apologies. Still, I’m not really sure your addressing of the points actually addresses them very much ?
But they knew it wouldn’t. They knew air warfare and long-range bombing of cities would be a major new thing. They knew (or at least hoped) tanks would pre-empt the need for trench warfare entirely by basically making ad-hoc defensive networks irrelevant unless they were specifically designed to counter tanks - which takes a lot of time and preparation and materials, as in the Maginot or Siegfried lines. But once past those prepared defences (somehow) then tanks could just plow through any hastily dug up infantry trench network.
And I mean, again, the one thing neither Germans nor French nor British wanted to happen was to spend (or have their children spend) years dying on their feet inside a muddy trench, shelled out of their minds on a daily basis, gassed out etc… While it’s true that the really massive casualties of WW1 happened during large offensives across no man’s land and straight into machine guns, the rest of it was just as traumatizing and a big hairy pile of NOPE for its survivors.
This point has also been raised by Corry El, but I don’t think it has a lot of merit. You can’t win a war by staying on the defensive, sort of by definition. The best you can hope for is for the enemy to stop attacking temporarily. This is all the more true when you consider the “fanatical death cult” aspect of the Axis regimes. Even in '45 with a Germany thoroughly 'sploded (I’m sorry, “de-housed”), starved of materials and industry to an incredible degree and sporting a morale that could only adequately be gauged with an electron microscope, the surrender only came *after *the crazy old man topped himself because Russian tanks were hours away from his last hidey hole. A similarly thoroughly, comprehensively destroyed Japanese war machine was still somehow determined to keep being dicks to the bitter end - they even tried a coup on the Emperor over his admitting defeat.
Well, yeah. They didn’t plan on their plan(s) to win not succeeding, somewhat tautologically. I don’t think many governments or militaries make detailed plans for what to do in the event of complete pwnage, because if you think your plan with result in getting trounced you have *some *incentive to pick a different plan :).
IOW, I’m not sure what that assertion is designed to demonstrate ?
That’s not how I interpret the movements made in response to the actual German invasion ; nor the troop deployments themselves. They absolutely kept forces in reserves, both in numbers (in order to be able to quickly capitalize on breaches) and in depth, all the way into northern France (because letting the bad guys push in then collapse around them was a new strategy both sides were exploring - which is merely the flipside of “have a fast force race around and behind the enemy to form a pocket, then collapse on it”)
Most of it comes from uni lectures about the interwar period which, if I still have the class material & bibliography it’s in one of the basement crates I haven’t bothered opening after the move ; some more from documentary osmosis over the years (especially stuff explaining the Maginot Line and why the popular perception of it is completely ass backwards - it’s one of my weirdly nationalistic pet peeves which I can’t quite explain because I’m the least nationalistic guy I know and you wouldn’t catch me dead waving any flag :o), and my reading entirely too many old newspapers because I was a weird kid.
I will agree that I probably overstated the Allies “modern doctrine” wrt armor, as at that point both the Brits and the French still mostly saw tanks as infantry support and trenchbreakers rather than a gamechanger of their own - but you can do mobile warfare without it necessarily being mechanized warfare. You just have to be willing not to get bogged down in sieges (be they offensive or defensive), to keep reserves to be hastily poured into any opening or at determined weak points etc…
That being said, while we might disagree on the specifics (and I might even have them slightly to completely wrong !) we seem to roughly align when it comes to the big picture, so, eh. Good 'nuff for free work
One thing I will note however in response to your analysis is that contrary to WW1 the French military situation was not nearly as much of a “dense manpower across a flankless frontline” thing. I mean, that was really the sticky point, why so much money and effort was poured into the Maginot line, why French forces tried to narrow the front down to Belgium’s SE border instead of the whole eastern France (the other part of that decision being, if we’re going to have a hellwar, let’s try and have it somewhere Not_France and hopefully in Germany itself this time around, yeah ? :o). As I said, the scars of WW1 on the French population were still not healed as many, many of its young men came back from the war incapable of raising a family. By the early thirties the big salient problem was “we can’t possibly defend the entire country if Germany comes back, there’s not nearly enough of us left”, which became all the more pressing that Germany was becoming increasingly warlike and re-arming. Hence the trying to avoid having to actually *do *the war at all costs, as you note.
But, of note as well, is that the Germans weren’t really all *that *keen on all out hellwar themselves in 1940. The German economy was only shifted to an actual total war footing in, what, '43, thereabouts ? I mean it increased gradually so it’s not like there was a clear before/after point ; but I expect you know what I mean.
I think that if Germany convinces the people of France and UK that his fight is against Communism he might make it politicaly difficult for their governments to fulfill their obligations. Maybe moving its forces on the west 50km inland to prove the point, it might work. It wasn’t that long before that Chamberlain had said “…a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing about”
Okay, here’s how I see the British and French strategic planning.
They looked back at WWI as a model for how another war against Germany would go. It was difficult to see the overall course of the war while it was going on. But once the war was over, military and political leaders could look back at the war and form conclusions about what happened.
Offenses were a bad idea. They produced huge amounts of casualties and didn’t achieve significant gains.
Defense was strong. A unit with a good defensive position could stand against a much larger unit on the offensive.
Economic warfare worked. Germany, for all practical purposes, was not defeated in the field. They held positions in France throughout the war. There was never any major offensive into Germany. Germany surrendered because their economy collapsed, which happened primarily because they were cut off from trade by a naval blockade.
Technology doesn’t matter all that much. New technologies got tried throughout the war; mass artillery attacks, radio communication, poison gas, aerial bombardment, tanks, submarines, etc. Many of them achieved tactical success. But ultimately none of them changed the strategic course of the war.
So the French and British planners absorbed these ideas and build a strategy around them. They still wanted to avoid a war if it was possible (I want to emphasize that point) but they made plans for fighting a war if they had to.
The overall strategy was to build up strong defensive positions along the border. Don’t allow the Germans to establish themselves inside France. These defensive positions would reduce the casualty rates of the troops holding them.
Don’t launch offensives. They produce casualties without producing results. And WWI showed that you could defeat a country without having to invade it. If the Germans were foolish enough to try to launch offensives against us, let them. Our defenses would absorb their attacks and leave them weaker than they started.
Establish a naval blockade. Once you’ve got a nice stable defensive line and are protected against enemy offenses, sit back and give the blockade time to work. It may take a few years but eventually the German economy will collapse like it did in WWI and Germany will surrender again.
I think if it had been possible, France and Britain would have extended the Maginot line up along the Belgian and Dutch border all the way to the North Sea. This couldn’t be done for political and economic reasons. So they accepted the reality that they would have to send troops into Belgium and maybe the Netherlands. But their plan was to send these troops in and establish defensive lines in these countries - not to use them as a route for invading Germany. At most, they might have considered an advance into Germany when that country’s economy was on the verge of collapse and an invasion would essentially be a walkover.
This strategic thinking is why Britain and France were unwilling to let Germany have a free hand in Eastern Europe. They wanted to keep the German economic base as small as possible so their plan for winning a war by economic isolation would work. So Poland became a line that they were unwilling to let Germany cross. They would have been even less willing to sit back while Germany defeated the Soviet Union and established an economic base there.
This strategic thinking wasn’t a secret even if some of the operational details were. The Abwehr must have known that there was no threat of a Anglo/French attack. This explains the German willingness to strip their western frontier of forces to use them in the invasion of Poland.
That would have been a sensible strategy for Anglo-French war v Germany based on the lessons of WWI. But in fairness to the counter argument that French interwar military thinking still envisaged defeating Germany in a war of maneuver supported by the permanent fortifications along portions of the German-French border*, consider:
Earlier interwar planning by the French could not assume the British would again be allies in a war with Germany, nor that the French Navy would always be able to impose an effective blockade by itself.
Somewhat related, plans for land warfare were naturally the province of armies. The French Army was naturally reluctant to base its plans entirely on an assumption of an effective French naval blockade let alone an assumption the RN would do so again.
So it’s plausible to say IMO that the French Army had some idea of actually defeating the Germany Army, using permanent fortifications as a means to that end, rather than formally adopting a doctrine that eschewed the offensive in favor of defeating Germany in a future war by means of a mainly British blockade.
Also consider the ‘German Army’ was a moving target. Even with the Maginot fortifications incomplete, general French military unreadiness, and lack of a 100% gtee of British support, the 1936 French Army would have been more than able to defeat the 1936 German Army if there had been the will to do that in reaction to the German reoccupation of the Rhineland. The Germans gained much more in land capability between 1936 and 1940 than the French did.
But when war came, history says the Allies were only willing to launch the tentative Saar Offensive in September 1939, and did not have an active plan to invade Germany in spring 1940. Although they were arguably more willing to take risk in counter offensives in Belgium which would result in the outright defeat of the German Army, which didn’t work out.
Again though I don’t believe Hitler would have relied on Anglo-French quiescence to launch a war in the East without defeating the French and driving the British out first, once they’d declared even Phony War v Germany.
*I recommend “Hommes Et Ouvrages De La Ligne Maginot” by Jean-Yves Mary et al, in 5 volumes, which includes some high level discussion but especially if like myself one is interested in the technical details of fortifications, it’s probably the most complete study in that respect, also w/ analysis of the actions related to the fortifications in the 1939-40 Franco-German campaign (and others campaigns, v Italian in 1940 in the Alps, ‘wrong way’ use of the fortifications by the Germans in the 1944-5 campaign). Anyway, you’ll see that significant portions of the Franco-German border did not have the large ‘ouvrages’ for which the line is famous, besides the borders with Luxembourg and Belgium not having them.
Earlier, it was mentioned that the blockade cause the German economy to collapse. In what ways? What did the Germans run out of in WWI? How did that compare to WWII?
Slight (but, I feel, salient) nitpick : technically speaking, Germany was not defeated in WW1. That specific part of the war ended in an armistice, followed by a negotiated and mutually agreed treaty - because the Allies couldn’t do better, or at least felt that trying to do better wasn’t worth the cost. If, as I think it was Patton (?) who said, the ultimate objective of a war is to strip the enemy of its will to fight then the Allies’ will to fight was also down to its metaphorical underpants at that point.
Obviously the Allies were still in a relatively dominant position and were therefore able to extract some serious concessions on the part of Germany… but that’s all they were. Voluntary concessions. A return to the status quo antebellum plus expenses, tax and the Preciousssss. I’m sorry; I meant to say Alsace & Lorraine. The Kaiser’s government was left in full (if very temporary, but the Allies couldn’t know that) control, and at the time even planned on using the terms of Versailles as cudgels against Republicans to further solidify and harden autocratic power.
The point is, it was not an unconditional surrender and annexation/partition/occupation, which is what you *really *want out of a victorious war. And the fact that 20 years later, heeere we go again bigger, louder and uncut should suffice to demonstrate why that is ;). It also explains why it was agreed at the Casablanca conference not to settle for anything less out of Nazi Germany this time around.
In contrast, Austro-Hungary was of much lesser import during WW2, as was the Ottoman Empire - both of which had been invaded and partly occupied when their armistices were signed.
Yeah, the Belgians would never agree to that, reasoning that it would have given the French a large incentive to throw Belgium under the panzerbus and/or use Belgium as the primary to-be-comprehensively-devastated battleground. Can’t really find fault with that reasoning.
But another good reason not to go all Maginot all the time (and all the way) is that it’s not a good strategic or tactical idea to construct an absolutely impregnable fortress, and a much better if less intuitive one to construct a fortress with one predictable way in. The latter can then be further engineered into a kill zone, ending the fight quicker than a long protracted siege.
It seems to largely come down to energy. In WWII, the Germans used synthetic oil, right? That seems to largely not get used except out of desperation or contingency planning.
That’s just not true. It’s not historically accurate, especially vis-a-vis Great Britain.
Hitler believed that Germany and Great Britain were natural allies and he made overtures to keep them on friendly terms. Hitler had no designs on Great Britain until he had no chilce. Heck, there’s a school of thought that says he let England off the hook at Dunkirk because even then he hoped for them to be allies.
France is another matter. He had conflicting views on France, and I believe that it’s hard to know when he might have turned on France.
No, he said he did. That’s not the same as “he did”. And then, he didn’t and almost overnight the “natural ally” became “the Jew among Aryan peoples” and “perfidious Albion”. Where Nazi propaganda had praised the ruthlessness of the UK in conquering its Empire, it turned to denouncing those “few hundred plutocrats” lording it over the entire world. British imperialism was a good example to be emulated, and a terrible example of profit-driven usurpation to be condemned. All at the same time, or in rapid sequence.
Hitler (and Nazis in general) said and believed in a ton of contradictory, otherwise mutually exclusive things, all according to the opportunism of the present minute. Which is par for the course for a movement that ultimately had very little coherent (or sincere) ideology to drive it besides arbitrary hatred(s) ; and whose primary goal was evermore power for power’s sake.
Modern neonazis aren’t any different, tbh - “the Holocaust didn’t happen, that’s a Jewish plot to make nazis look bad ; but it *should *happen exactly as it never happened, because Jews still plot the plots that Hitler used to justify the Holocaust which he didn’t do !” brain discreetly leaking out of ears
That’s really meaningless as an indication of intentions. Hitler also signed an actual neutrality pact with the USSR, drafting partition plans for Poland et al. while they were at it. Does that mean Hitler had no intention to attack Russia at the time those agreements were reached ? :dubious:
And of course he would make peace offers to the UK - if successful that would have driven a wedge betwen UK and France, allowing him to defeat one without having to worry about the other. Then, thanks to the expanded powerbase of the conquered one, he’d have been in a much better position to attack the other. Does that, in turn, mean he was planning on doing *that *from the get go ? No, not really, either. But Hitler’s regime having been directed by opportunism from the get go, it’s hardly a stretch.
Which is why it’s also helpful to consider the broader context & origins of Nazism. Even if you’re not convinced by Fischer’s broader zeitgeist/continuation of WW1 arguments, direct revanchism *for *WW1 was still a crucial part of interwar Pan-german movements & thought that Nazis co-opted. Guess which side England was on in WW1 ?
Of further note, the ideology of Nazism (to the extent it even had one) was predicated on an enemy to fight, and fighting for fighting’s sake. Even if in 1939 Hitler really saw England as a natural ally, then had he been succesful in stomping USSR and France and hanged the last Jew with the guts of the last Communist he would have immediately started looking for more enemies to use as justifications for his dictatorship. That’s how nazism works. Hell that’s how any dictatorship work - nazism being further blinkered in that the mere existence of an enemy is sufficient to justify trying to utterly destroy it to prove yourself stronger, reveal yourself in the conflict, achieve your manifest destiny, whatever the hell else. Nazism is a dumb death cult, is my point.
German populist thought in the interwar was *really *not conflicted on France (anymore that French Boulangists were any conflicted re:Germany in the early 20th century). They took Alsace & Lorraine ! *They *imposed injust reparations, kicking us when we were down !
Yeah, I am reading The Sleepwalkers and it appears clear to me France was the nation* most responsible for the Great War. Not that the rest are in any way blameless. But France had negotiated with Russia to start something in Serbia, so AH would intervene, thus Russia mobilizes a small part of it’s army vs AH, leading Germany it, then Russia and France crush Germany in a pincer movement. Which, except for that last part, is just about what happened. I understand Germany’s anger at having to accept 100% of the blame for starting the Great War in the treaty…and paying for it all. Having France- who was most responsible for the war- make Germany take the blame must have been “gauling”.*
I haven’t read The Sleepwalkers (although it looks interesting and now that you’re made me aware of it, I’ll check it out) but I question the “France did it” narrative.
The “Austria and Germany did it” narrative runs like this. Austria-Hungary was having a lot of problems. Many of the ethnic groups in the Empire wanted to split off and form their own country. Pretty much the only thing holding the country together was the personal prestige of Emperor Franz Joseph. But Franz Joseph was eighty-four years old and his time was running out. It was widely feared (or in some places hoped) that when he died the Empire would fall apart.
Some people in the government felt that a quick war with a victory over a foreign enemy might be useful. A victory would raise the prestige of the government and having the various ethnic groups fighting side by side against a common enemy would paper over their differences. It was hoped that the good feelings from a short war might keep things quiet long enough to get through the succession crisis.
Serbia then handed Austria-Hungary a perfect opportunity. Austria-Hungary didn’t want a big long war but a war against just Serbia looked the right size.
Germany was looking at a bigger picture. They saw their strategic situation getting worse. Their main allies were Austria-Hungary and Italy. But they could see the problems that Austria-Hungary was having. And Italy was growing more distant.
Germany’s main opponent was France. France was in the middle of a major political crisis (the Dreyfuss Affair). France’s main ally was Russia. Russia was still weakened by the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 Revolution. But things were finally starting to get better and Russia had just begun a ten year plan of economic and military reform. France was also developing an alliance with Britain. It was still in its early stages but it looked to be getting stronger.
So Germany looked at all of these factors and could see that its strategic situation was going to get worse with time. So if a war was going to happen, it should happen as soon as possible. Therefore when Austria-Hungary consulted them about its war plans, Germany gave them its full support. And Germany wanted a war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia to turn into a general war.
As for France, they were looking at things from the opposite direction. All of the above-mentioned factors that would make the future worse for Germany were going to make the future better for France. France could see that postponing the start of a war for a few years would improve their chances of victory.
So while I agree France was more interested than Germany in fighting a war, I feel the timing is wrong for France to have been the instigator in 1914. Germany and Austria-Hungary had reasons to want a war to start in 1914. France and its allies all had reasons to not want a war to start that year.
I haven’t read The Sleepwalkers, but I was given to understand Clark’s position was to reject the question of the attribution of guilt entirely as being generally unhelpful to understanding the multipartite process ?
(oh, Little Nemo beat me to the punch. FWIW if we’re having this discussion, my position is they *all *did it. Each of the powers had jingoistic actors in key decision-making roles, they each entered the war pursuing nationalist gains and ultimately it wasn’t so much a Mexican stand-off as a quick-draw contest)
France was hoping for a Balkans issue. But calling them “the instigator” is a bit too much. Obviously, that was Serbia.
And yes, most of the Powers in Europe are to blame. Germany, AH, France, Russia and even GB. I think France deserves slightly more than the others, it was angry over Alsace/lorraine.
- both of which had been invaded and partly occupied when their armistices were signed.