Ollie Garchy
Active member
I have to agree that there is little evidence for France and Britain wanting direct war with Germany in 1939.
Are you saying that the dominant theory of WWII origins cannot be investgated? Ie. subjected to falsification. If so, then the theory becomes dogma. If not, we should be able to focus on the major elements and look at their value.
Here are a few issues of dispute.
(1) First of all, Hitler had no military timetable. It would actually be easy to demonstrate such a plan. You pull it out and lay it on the table. Where is it? At the Nuremberg Trial, the prosecuters tried hard to demonstrate one. They ended up using the memory of a Junior officer who attended a military meeting in 1937. Sorry, but this "evidence" is only hearsay. The Hoßbach or Hossbach memorandum is weak at best and proves nothing.
(2) German military strength: The British and French were militarily more powerful than Germany in 1939. "The time is long past when it was possible to see the protracted debate over British foreign policy in the 1930s as a struggle between Churchill, an angel of light, fighting against the velleities of uncomprehending and feeble men in high places. It is reasonably well-known today that Churchill was often ill-informed, that his claims about German strength were exaggerated and his prescriptions impractical, that his emphasis on air power was misplaced". [Gordon Craig]
(3) Britain & Empire: The British clung to their dominant paradigm that Britain had the moral authority to rise above all others and act as mediator and arbiter -- in their interests, of course. For this reason, Polish or Czech persecution of their German minorities was ignored. German persecution of Polish or Czech minorities was jumped on as evidence of pure evil. British persecution of millions of people was actually "whitewashed" and called the "White Man's Burden". [See the works of Edward Said in connection with the paternalistic paradigm of Empire].
(4) Britain had a military timetable based on an "ideology" of global war. In a general sense, the British way of war was always to bring in the weight of empire and important allies against an enemy. This much is obvious and can be drawn from past conflicts and the imperial strategy of the 1930s. The critical thing is to mention that British conflicts always assumed a global character for this reason.
The British did not fear invasion during the 1930s...only for a short period in 1940 as plan after plan failed. British policy, developed during the 1930s, was to embroil Germany in a long war of attrition. "British strategy was global rather than local...Britain was manifestly vulnerable to the interruption of her sea traffic by states with pretensions...When war broke out in Europe in September 1939...The outlook at first was set fair...The German navy was tiny...The German navy knew that there was no prospect of fighting any kind of face-to-face battle with the enemy fleet. Neither were the prospects for submarine warfare against British trade much better. The German submarine arm had only eighteen operational boats in the Atlantic, against an enemy who began at once to convoy all shipping and to provide escort vessels equipped and trained for anti-submarine warfare...Erich Raeder regarded the outcome as a foregone conclusion, hoping only that his forces would know 'how to die gallantly' when the time came". [Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, pp. 33-35.]
The critical thing for the British military and Churchill was to bring in major allies against Germany. France, with an army as large as that of Germany, seemed an exceptionally strong ally. Initial strategy in 1939 maintained that France would hold the line while Britain would bring in the resources of Empire. London also hoped to bring in the United States and then win by sheer weight of numbers.
As anyone can see from this, any type of localized issue in regards to a major power could push Britain to wage a global conflict. The insular British position made it strong but with a severely warped global perspective. Britain thought in terms of incremental increases. That is, the German seizure of Poland or any other area such as the Sudetenland (even if the latter was ethnically German) was considered intolerable. We will get to that issue in a minute. But it is important to stress that British policy could not tolerate German acquisition of any resources at all. [Alexander, Martin S. and William J. Philpott (eds), Anglo-French Defence Relations between the Wars. Studies in Military and Strategic History Series (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002) 231 pp.
MORE IMPORTANTLY, the minute such a war was started, Britain could no longer afford to retreat. It was for this reason that all German peace initiatives (24 or so and the Hess flight -- the documents still being kept under lock and key) were rejected. This policy was absolutely catastrophic for Europe.
All of this was based on a simple idea: "In the 1930s it was commonly assumed that Germany would violate Versailles and rearm in the air, posing the sort of annihilating threat first painted by Wells. The British Air Ministry expected the Germans to use bombing in a 'ruthless and indiscriminate' fashion because that was the German way. Even before the Nazi revolution, Germany was regarded as the disruptive force in world affairs. Hitler played a part already written for him". Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won, p. 356.
Temporary Conclusion: The Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland in 1939 did not start WWII. The British-French declaration of war against Germany did. Why? That's the issue here.
Last edited: