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Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 1.聽
Posted by U14129453 (U14129453) on Monday, 7th September 2009
Did we underestimate the strength of the German army or overestimate the strength of ours? In hindsight would it not have been best to build our forces before declaring war even if that meant half of Europe had fallen by then?
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Message 2
Posted by Stoggler (U1647829) on Monday, 7th September 2009
I'm assuming you're referring to the Second World War
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Message 3
Posted by Allan D (U1791739) on Monday, 7th September 2009
We did nothing on land for almost seven months and we were still hopelessly ill-prepared. Chamberlain always hoped that the strength of the Royal Navy and the economic blockade it imposed on Germany would cripple the German economy enough to force Hitler to the peace table (that is why he was loath to order further measures such as aerial bombing for fear of antagonising German public opinion).
In this, as in much else, Chamberlain was hopelessly naive and self-deluded. The pact with the Soviet Union not only ensured that Poland could be swallowed up without difficulty but also guaranteed Germany access to as much raw materials, especially those required fot the making of munitions and armaments, as she required and invalidated the effects of the naval blockade.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 4
Posted by dmatt47 (U13073434) on Monday, 7th September 2009
If we are talking about the Second World War, then we had a treaty obligation to Poland and that if we waited to build up forces for Europe then it may have been too late. Britain had already capitulated over the Rhineland and Czechoslovakia. I think that if we had waited there would have nothing of Europe to defend. We knew we were not ready for war but there was little option.
The one advantage the UK had was the English Channel.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 5
Posted by MartLangers (U14130162) on Tuesday, 8th September 2009
Why did we not see our obligation through even after Germany had surrendered?
People bring up the fact that we declared war due to our moral obligations to poor old Poland, why did we not declare war on Russia after Germany had surrendered? They occupied/invaded Poland. Polish soldiers were fighting for the liberation of Europe knowing that they would still have to go home to an occupied country.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 6
Posted by Amphion (U3338999) on Tuesday, 8th September 2009
This brings us back to the partitoning of Europe at the end of the war, and in particular, Churchill's agreement with Stalin to shift the whole of the Polish state one hundred miles or so, to the west.
Churchill's meeting with the Polish Army Command in Italy, comes to mind. Especially those Polish soldiers from Lwov.
If the USA hadn't needed the alliance of Russia over the Japan situation in the Far East, its interesting to speculate whether the western allies would have stayed their arm in 1945...and whether the cold war could have been World War 2, appendaged!!!Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 7
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Tuesday, 8th September 2009
The simple answer seems to be that Britain and France did not regard a declaration of war as in direct conflict with a strategy of waiting until they had built up their forces. Although there were some implied problems, for example the declaration of war temporarily interrupted the flow of armament from the USA because of the Neutrality Act, there were also opportunities to justify a greater industrial and military mobilization.
If anything, the Allies of 1939 still tended to overestimate the German war readiness, thanks to an efficient German propaganda effort. In the 1930s the powers indulged in a kind of showy intimidation, in which the powers displayed their newest military equipment on shows for the benefit of foreign visitors. By careful manipulation of the display, the Third Reich had managed to create an impression of larger strength than it actually had, while sweeping the (many) weaknesses of its military under the carpet.
The British and French governments actually had read the signs well enough to start their re-armament efforts already in 1933-1934: If Germany still had a lead in 1939, this was in part because its re-armament had already started during the Weimar Republic, and in part because Hitler was willing to take enormous risks with the German economy to prepare the country for a war he definitely wanted to have. But by scaling up armament production, mobilizing larger forces, and placing enormous orders in the USA, the French and British could hope to overtake Germany in a few years (in 1940, Britain alone built 50% more aircraft than Germany, for example).
It was this that lead to the logic of the "Phoney War" of September 1939 - May 1940, during which the Allies hoped to keep the front quiet while they built up their forces and strengthened the blockade of Germany. (Hitler, in contrast, desperately wanted to attack in the West, but bad weather and problems with the Army's preparedness forced repeated postponements.)
It is debatable whether it was smart to declare war, and then sit behind an immobile front line: It certainly did the morale of the troops no good. On the other hand, the German invasion of Poland made war inevitable, and the blockade of German trade was in itself an act or war.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 8
Posted by Captain Hindsight (U14697457) on Sunday, 21st November 2010
It's a question which is actually rarely asked but nonetheless a very good one. Personally I don't think Britain had anything to gain by declaring war over Poland. There was nothing we could do to save it and Russia would have been a far better ally than Poland. As well as this, if Britain hadn't declared war then they could have encouraged Hitler eastwards and wouldn't have had to fight at all. Hitler just wanted a free hand in Eastern Europe (Chamberlain and Churchill both knew this) and to eventually take Russia so it's debatable just how much of a threat Hitler was to Britain.
Together with France GB had a larger collective army and a more powerful navy than Germany so perhaps we did overestimate our own strength. In the end Russia were responsible for 80% of the Nazi military casualties.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 9
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Sunday, 21st November 2010
Politics isn't done in a vacuum. In September 1939, Chamberlain did not have many options left. When he came back from Munich in 1938, he had been cheered by the crowds and praised by the press for saving "peace in our time". The political atmosphere in the autumn of 1939 was very different, because the public had had enough evidence of Hitler's untrustworthiness. When Hitler attacked Poland anyway, he had made a choice to go to war with Britain, even if he wasn't fully aware of it. The British government did not, in reality, have other options left. Chamberlain's first response to the German attack was very measured -- and the immediate result was what Chamberlain himself called an "angry scene" in the Commons. He was then told by Tory backbenchers and cabinet members that if he did not declare war on Germany now, they would replace him by someone who would.
The Soviet-German deal and the German attack on Poland combined to make war between Germany and France highly likely, as it secured (at least temporarily) Germany's back, and France too was obliged to assist Poland. Hitler's long-term goal might be to conquer Lebensraum in the East, but in the short term he could hardly be blind to the threat of the enemy in the West, and he was very aware that time was not working in Germany's favor. If a German occupation of Poland was not a direct threat to Britain, a German occupation of (part of) France was something entirely different. And if there was to be a war, the Royal Navy insisted that it be declared as soon as possible, with a short time limit in any ultimatum to Berlin. This would allow the Navy to snap up as much of the German merchant fleet as possible, and prevent German commerce raiders and U-boats from reaching their stations. (This conflicted with the wishes of the French generals, who wanted a few more days to mobilize and evacuate civilians from the border zones.)
Finally, while the Allies could not do much to help Poland, they were confident enough about the outcome of the war. The German victory of May 1940 was achieved by superior German command and control structures and vastly superior German generalship, but such factors are less visible, hard to account for or predict. Where the hard numbers were concerned -- soldiers, tanks, aircraft, warships -- the Allies held a superficial but comforting superiority. The knowledge that the results of the military spending boom of the 1930s were about to reach the front line increased the optimism.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Sunday, 21st November 2010
I think that it is too simplistic to say that Britain declared war to defend Poland and keep Poland a free country.
As an ally Britain was obliged to help Poland to fight in the event of war, just as Britain was an ally of France and was obliged to help France in the event of war.. In both cases there was no clear obligation to carry on the fight alone until our allies were once more able to play their part. The point of alliances is that the combined strength can achieve what neither party can achieve alone.
So in the summer of 1940 when France signed an armistice with Germany the nature of those terms showed quite clearly an assumption in France that these armistice conditions would operate for as short a period as those of the 1918 Armistice: and many people in France were amazed that Britain did not sue for peace. Churchill thought otherwise, and carried the country with him.
But the fact that Britain fought on was based upon the same fundamental reality that had produced the initial declaration of war..
After Munich, and the subsequent developments that made it obvious that Hitler had not spoken the truth when he said that "We have no further demands in Europe", Chamberlain's Appeasement policy, which involved negotiating a way to international security and an enduring international settlement, was effectively in tatters: and Britain's honour with it.
Mrs Thatcher finally apologised to the Czechs for the shame of Munich. An Englishman's word was no longer his bond. She also famously said that Mr. Gorbachov was a man "we could do business with", well, when the German's staged a "defensive" attack on Poland, it was apparent that Hitler was not a man that anyone could really "do business with"- and moreover that Germany was only likely to get stronger with the economic assets that had been seized or were to "come on tap" like all the contributions France was committed to make- like paying the expenses to Germany for an occupying army of 18 million men, according to the French historian Henri Amouroux.
After the French armistice according to Harold Nicholson's "War Diaries" there was a real fear in the War Cabinet that mainland Europe might accept a Nazi proposal to produce a European Union that would bring the same kind of state economic revolution to the continent as had happened in Germany since 1933. A Union under German leadership seemed to offer a way out of the World Chaos that had reached its heights of depths in 1932-3. This would leave GB as the only country at war, and the Cabinet were worried about just how the "common people" could be persuaded to fight on alone. This was when Churchill suggested to Nicholson that he should prepare "war aims" for a better Britain after victory. Nicholson quickly decided that this would have to be some sort of Socialism.
So the extra commitments made to Poland in early 1939 were meant to be a clear indication to Germany that aggression against Poland would be a "cassus belli"- not to save Poland, but to save the world from German expansionism in support of the goal of a Millennial Third Reich run by and for a totalitarian master race.
In the aftermath of the war, when I was growing up, the heroics of Trojans at The Pass of Thermopylae seemed to have a really strong resonance: and a reading over the last 3 days of a 1955 biography of Group Captain Cheshire has taken my mind right back to a struggle that had been undertaken for the sake of "Christian Civilization"-- and the reality of those times, when the Cheshire homes were being first set up to cope with the needs of the dying and neglected in a society in which that Christian Civilization seemed to Cheshire to be at best on its last legs.
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Message 11
Posted by Mike Waller (U4782937) on Monday, 22nd November 2010
There is an old story of a man coming across a tiger about to eat a fox. The fox appeals to the man on the grounds that he had found the tiger in cage-trap and had let him out on the promise of a share in future spoils. Once out, the tiger had turned on him. The man said that this was a very difficult case to judge and he could only do so by asking the tiger to step back into the cage so he could see the initial position. The tiger did so, where upon the man slammed the bolt home. Asked by the fox - usually seen as an enemy of man - why he had saved him, the man replied, 'Once he had eaten you, I would have been the next on the menu".
This, surely, was the reason for going in 1939. Appeasement had not worked and each army and armaments industry which fell into Hitler's hands was one less that could be deployed on the allies side. I put this idea in poem dealing with WW1, but the principle still applies:
It鈥檚 just we knew Germanic will
Would never, never have its fill.
Once they鈥檇 consumed the Russian horde,
They鈥檇 toast the Frenchman on his sword.
Next, and at a time that they judged mete,
They鈥檇 build the ships to roast our fleet.
Then, all of Europe 鈥榥eath their thumbs,
They鈥檇 scour the world in search of plums.
Men facing tigers know this rule:
Attack by turn, he鈥檒l eat you all.
So, as fight we must, we chose a day
With other Powers still in play.
To our cold eyes your world is rotten
As in it this stark rule鈥檚 forgotten:
A course though deadly, hard and long
By these alone is not made wrong.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 12
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Monday, 22nd November 2010
Re: Message 7 and 9.
Mutatis Mutandis,
I thank you very much for these two thought-provoking messages.
Kind regards and with esteem,
Paul.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 13
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Tuesday, 23rd November 2010
In my opinion, (And it only mine), the answer is no. Britain would have been better off if we had keptthe pro german Edward as King, then in 1939 remain a nuteral but pro German country, cooperating with them on things like the A bomb and the jet engine, while supplying both Germany and Japan with raw goods such as oil and rubber from the Empire. We hounoured only half the treaty in that we declared war on Germany, but not Russia who also invaded Poland. And to what ends? we came out of the war a broken bankrupt country, in hock to the US. So it would have been better for us, (And that was the question) not to have declared war.
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Message 14
Posted by Mike Waller (U4782937) on Tuesday, 23rd November 2010
It seems to me that the one plus of such an approach would have been that as there would have been no freedom of expression we would no have had to read such posts!
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Message 15
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Tuesday, 23rd November 2010
Mike, if that remark was made at me, please explain why. The question was should we have declared war when we did? My answer was no. So, explain please what good it did us (And Poland) declaring war? Was Poland freed? No, We went in to the war as one of the most powerful countrys in the world. we came out broke, and treated by the US as a second class country. As today in Afghanistan, we should have kept our nose out of it. If we had, France would have done the same. The real mistake was not to have finished off Germany in 1918. Thrn perhaps the Second war wouldn't have happened. Again if the allies hadn't withdrawn their troops from Germany, and then stood firm over the likes of the Rhineland, then again perhaps the war wouldn't have happened. If you slap the bully down the first time, then he backs off. you don't, and he pushes a bit more.
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Message 16
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 23rd November 2010
Grumpyfred
Of course we could postulate an alternative history.. but the OP does address one moment and the prevailing conditions..
Perhaps as a point of detail one should point out that Britain did not simply declare war. Hitler was presented with a final note laying down terms, non-compliance with which would mean that he was accepting that a state of war would exist between Britain and Germany. It was thus Hitler's decision that the ultimatum should be ignored that meant war with Britain.
Was it worth it?
Is anything worth it?
Has life any point or value?
While historical determinism and inevitability, are no longer fashionable.. so is the idea of an intelligible and coherent sweep of history-- or evolution that is either progressive or regressive.... Historians have largely given up explaining how the present fits in with the past and with our future aspirations for a better world.
The Second World War coming after the 1WW and the World Chaos resulted in increasingly the great confidence placed in science and technology as tools by which we could achieve a mastery over our destinies- a Triumph of the Will-. But this has now been eroded..
The self-interested "beliefs and truths" that were adopted in order to escape from the World Chaos of 1932-3, and then to win the war by which a collective will based upon representative democracy and Human Rights could overcome the flying start obtained by proponents of the totalitarian will of leaders and/or cliques, have underpinned our striving to avoid a return to either World War or World Chaos since 1945... That is until the end of the Cold War ended and undermined that drive to create a better world with social and welfare provision, and civil rights within "The West".
As I have written recently- and posted in just an extract about "Another Kind of Western Front"- the Britain that you describe as existing after 1945 was really already there in 1918-9. That is when people were aware that a whole Civilization had come to an end, and it had been a global reality built around the British Empire.
Because JM Keynes and Lloyd George had decided that the British banking system should pay for the war in part by selling most of our gold reserves to the USA, the Bank of England was no longer able to maintain global currency stability. And part of Keynes' highly publicised fury in the negotiations at Versailles came from a realization that the US bankers were not Old_Etonians and Cambridge Apostles, and were not prepared, and in fact were not equipped to, take on the responsibilities that went with the gold.
Currency instability was one of the very important push-pull factors in the instabilities of the inter-war period that eventually led to really extreme measures.
The Second World War persuaded the US that it would have to take on global responsibilities in future- towards the IMF, the UN, Nato etc.. And it also persuaded the British that "some reparations were due" for the social consequences of the industrial revolution, so that, as a Labour Minister told a visiting American just after the war, "We have had our revolution. We did not cut off their heads. We just cut off their wealth."
As a child born in 1944 I am very much aware of the disastrous world that I was born into... And yet for all that tragic loss of 55 million lives, in terms of world history, and the grounds for a hopeful view of what humanity could achieve, I still believe that I have lived in the best possible times.. Though I believe that as Gray's ploughman quietly plodding my way home in an eighteenth century England- not carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders- I might have been a more contented person. I do envy my grandfather even in a later age his life "behind the plough" in the Cotswolds.
But it is very difficult to "Keep the faith" and with that any confidence that the dynamic of History is moving us towards any kind of Promised Land.. That , however, seems to be partly because it is very fashionable now, and very market friendly, to portray just about all of history as the work of human beings that are just another animal species with no higher expectations to go along with our special and privileged potentiality.
From each according to his abilities does not seem to apply very much to our stewardship of the Earth.
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Message 17
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Tuesday, 23rd November 2010
But again I must ask. if we had a treaty with Poland, Why having declared war on Germany, why under the same treaty didn't we declare war on Russia as well?
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Message 18
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 23rd November 2010
Grumpyfred
Simple answer- Because the Polish guarantee was a test for Germany and not for the Soviet Union..
The subsequent Anglo-Soviet talks aimed at working out just how these two powers might combine to defeat Hitler stalled because the British did not seem to the USSR to be prepared to commit "serious numbers" of forces to the military preparations that would be involved. And also because the Poles and the Baltic States were in many ways more worried about the "Russians" than the Germans.
We tend to forget that the USSR sent delegates to the World Economic Conference that met in the Natural History Museum in the midst of World Economic Chaos in 1932- and for which the League of Nations had prepared very impressive dossiers about the world economy and world trade. The Soviet's delegates there were prepared to tell everyone about just why the Soviet Union with Socialism in One Country and Stalin's Five Year Plans was almost the only country to be immune from the global economic downturn.. And the Nazis were soon to implement their own Five Year Plans. In fact government intervention and things like "dumping"- now back in vogue- were a feature of the problems of the time, and the subsequent efforts to solve them: eg socialism in the UK and the New Deal in the USA.
In the power struggle in the USSR Stalin had forced Trotsky, the advocate of World Revolution, out of the country: and was more concerned with the willingness of Capitalists to back military intervention in the USSR, as they had done in the Civil War between the White and the Reds, than with any Soviet expansion. [I have still unread on my bookshelves Antony Sutton's conspiracy theory "Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler"]
Anyway why would the USSR want more land. The challenges of modernising the huge Union were complex enough, with the creation of a modern transport infrastructure serving the existing geographical area a priority in the first two plans. And Stalin could dismiss the invasion of the newly independent Poland by Trotsky's Red Army as something that had happened before "his watch".
In fact it is very difficult I think to dismiss the idea that much of the history of the Soviet Union after c1935 was based upon the idea that the kind of Capitalists who funded Hitler and encouraged the Nazis to largely forget the "Socialist" element of National Socialism, were going to encourage Hitler to eventually turn his attention to the "living space" and huge reserves of natural resources in the USSR. The USA had spread out across one continent. Great Britain had grabbed an Empire on which the Sun never set.. The Japanese had started to grab one in the Far East; the Italians scraps in Africa.
Moreover there is a case for saying that certainly some sections of opinion in the UK were not unhappy that Hitler's great obsessive hatreds seem to be directed to Jews and Communists. And I think some in Stalin's entourage may well have thought that it would might seem convenient for Britain if the next great war saw Germany and the USSR almost destroying each other.
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Message 19
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Tuesday, 23rd November 2010
Further to the question of Poland I think that it was significant that, in the absence of effective League of Nations action, and US retreat to isolationism, Britain and France were just about all that was left of any dream of collective security-- and the French, from the days of Chopin and Georges Sand had been more closely bound up with the romance of the Polish cause than the UK. The British went more for Greece and Italy in the nineteenth century.
Certainly De Gaulle went and fought with the Poles against the Red Army in the early 1920's along with other French officers.. It was there that he was struck by the passionate determination of the ordinary people to defend their land at all costs- something he thought was sadly lacking in France even before 1930. Nevertheless the guarantee given to Poland were joint Anglo-French ones that would ensure that if Germany attacked Poland it would face a war on two fronts- the "nightmare" scenario that Bismarck's diplomacy had prevented.
Of course it now seems to us self-evident that the Blitzkrieg would be able to use science and technology to produce lightning war.. But new things become obvious when they are no longer new. I have had the privilege of being loaned a dossier assembled by the parent of one of my pupils, that included an unpublished military report by one of the family who had been sent to France early in 1940 with a unit that were to perform in front of the camera for the making of a film to be used for public information or recruiting..They were due to be filming somewhere down in the "bockage" country, when they heard that they were to be rushed up to counter a German invasion through Belgium. What followed was a great deal of confused marching around, with this British officer scouting around for suitable points for the men to have a cup of tea and a bite to eat.
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Message 20
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
So, in 1939, Russia invades Poland while Germany sits on its border. Does GB and France declare war on Russia?
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Message 21
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
Grumpyfred
I think that these questions vexed the negotiations with the Poles and the Baltic States.. But I am sure that there are others who might give you chapter and verse on the diplomacy..As I understand it Britain and France were most concerned with Germany's attempts to unstitch the Versailles Treaty- which in the light of a previous post of yours- one might point out really did set out to "cut Germany down to size".
But unlike the tradition of negotiated peaces of the eighteenth century Versailles was a dictated peace signed allegedly under protest. I think it was Harold Nicholson, a junior British diplomat at Versailles, who recorded that someone asked a British witness to the signings whether it was true that the German representatives had made some protest like refusing to stand up for the signing. He had replied that he had not watched them. An English gentleman did not stare at people in great distress.
Nevertheless when things were looking better in the Stresemann years, with the USA helping to soften the impacts of the Treaty after the crisis of 1923, and the first Nazi Putsch, Germany did agree that it would accept all of the borders laid down by Versailles along its Western frontiers. Hitler did march into the Rhineland, but that was just occupied Germany. But after that his attentions were aimed at the restrictions on German power to the East: and the whole question of Danzig and the Polish Corridor were such obvious weaknesses in the Versailles Settlement, after the Czech Crisis, that preventing military action to undo Versailles became a real priority.
Of course in the light of Wilson's Fourteen Points, and the hopes for a better world in a new Civilization after 1918, it could be hoped that a new and wiser world would be able to use the League of Nations to settle disputes: and that a place like Danzig might find permanent security as an "International City".. Internationalism seemed to be the solution to the recurring problem of wars between nation states, and situations in which "things fall apart". And, in theory at least, the USSR could be seen as potentially a state that could fit into such a world order. Stalin main brief that he had been given by Lenin in 1917 was to work out a policy for the nations within the Russian Empire like his own- the Georgians- and it was Stalin who drafted the policy that the Empire would be destroyed and replaced by a "United States" situation in which various Socialist Republics run by Soviets representing the common people and the rank and file military would come together in an overarching Union.
It was Nazi Germany that turned its back upon such forward thinking and tried to drag Europe back into the ideas and modes of earlier tribal, barbaric and "Heroic" ages with its glorification of war and militarism that above all else the victors of the 1ww sought to stop.
Having specialised in Soviet Economic History I am aware that of course what went on in the Soviet Union was often terrible and a travesty of the ideals in which that experiment was dressed up. But I think that in 1939- and no more clearly than in the Nazi-Soviet Pact- Soviet policy was obliged to be pragmatic. Nazi policies o the other hand were driven by what appeared to the British as maniacal, depraved and dangerous ideology.
Hitler's Germany was becoming a "bully-boy" and eventually there is only one way to deal with a bully.
So in answer to your question I can not recognise the scenario that you postulate... From almost the creation of the Third Reich the USSR had been getting ready for a defensive war against Germany. I find it inconceivable that the USSR would have invaded the bordering states giving Germany an opportunity to pose as their liberators- at a cost. As we know the war on the Eastern Front 1941-5 was really touch and go, even with the USSR being supplied by the Western Allies with a great deal of her necessary supplies. As I said earlier, the problems and assets within the USSR were huge enough, especially considering that this was a revolutionary experiment in doing things a new way.. Experiments are usually conducted within a controlled context. And the Soviet experiment was rather and accident of history in which a huge state that was still incredible backward tried to make the "great leap forward" envisaged by Western intellectuals that would at least start the new Civilization that the world needed after the collapse of Civilization in the First World War.
In fact the world went back to the Dark Ages and Romanesque barbarian kingdoms that clothed themselves in the robes of the previous Civilization without really grasping its essence.
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Message 22
Posted by Grumpyfred (U2228930) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
Cass, good points, but we cannot get around the fact that Russia did invade Poland after Germany did, then started killing anybody that could bee seen as a threat. Then at the end of the war occupied the country for 50 years.
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Message 23
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
Grumpyfred
I totally agree...And your initial point on this thread was one that I almost invariably made to pupils during my teaching career..
Unfortunately, however, historians have given up the idea of history as some kind of story of human progress where we can take full advantage of what appears to be the unique ability of our species to build up various sorts of capital- material, intellectual, moral, emotional and whatever other kind of "box" that one might wish to sub-divide the oneness of actual life into.
To quote Norman Lamont in a more limited context really we have come down time and again to short-termism and crisis management. And as all progress now seems to be the apparent progress made possible by developments in science and technology we are left with reliving the past..
It is very obvious that Stalin became a "Red Tsar" and that after 1945 the USSR returned to old Russian expansionism. But at the same time Britain under Labour turned back to the ideas of the 1880's and 1890's. Subsequently Mrs Thatcher went back to Gladstonian Liberalism- policies that were in many ways continued by New Labour - including Gladstone's support of 麻豆约拍 Rule. Under Mr Cameron there has been a reconnection with Disraelian Conservatism...
But, these continue to be Romanesque efforts dressing contemporary reality in old clothes.. with the supposedly "Socialist" Labour Party being almost totally cynical about the idea that Society is capable of doing anything, when Humanity lived by means of societies for tens of thousands of years.
As one sees in supposed areas of creativity- popular art and fashion- the "quick fix" of just re-vamping the old seems to satisfy a market demand that requires no more than a little novelty.
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Message 24
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
From almost the creation of the Third Reich the USSR had been getting ready for a defensive war against Germany.聽
Interesting. For all intents and purposes, Stalin launched the full scale militarization as early as in 1927 under the innocuous titles Collectivization and Industrialization. That's quite a few years before the Third Reich would even become a reality, not to mention the fact that Germany at the time had been a thoroughly disarmed state.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 25
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
But again I must ask. if we had a treaty with Poland, Why having declared war on Germany, why under the same treaty didn't we declare war on Russia as well?聽
It is been relegated to the footnotes of history, but if the French and British had not been defeated on the Western front in May 1940, they might very well have done just that.
For strategists who expected a repeat of the last war, it was logical that the next phase in the war with Germany would result in a stalemate again: Only this time they would try to have the lines of trenches a bit further north, along the Maginot line and then at some point through Belgium, preferably as close as possible to the Ruhr. Then the war would be decided by bombing and by an economic blockade.
To observers in Paris and London, it was apparent that Germany was dependent on supplies of raw materials from the USSR and that this dependency was likely to increase if the war lasted longer and the economic blockade had its full impact. The Winter War with Finland highlighted (and exaggerated) Soviet weakness, brought about by the Stalinist purges of the officer corps and some less than optimal doctrinal choices. Hence French and British strategists seriously contemplated a war with the USSR, as this was thought to be the weaker partner in a de facto Soviet-German alliance.
The point was not merely to avenge Poland, the real goals were to gain a foothold in Scandinavia (cutting supplies of iron ore to Germany) or in the Caucasus (to capture the sources of Soviet oil.)
Of course the turn the war took in May 1940 changed all that. There was no point in Britain alone attacking the USSR, when the Germans had just fundamentally changed the strategic situation.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 26
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
suvo
Yes.. But that could have just been the kind of useless armies of millions of conscripted peasants that had failed during the First World War. There are armies and armies.
But 1927 was in the period when there was a rapprochement between Germany and her former enemies during the Stresemann Years. With the Locarno Treaty offering peace in the West, but the possibility of change in the East, allied with the ideological struggle between Trotsky's Permanent and International revolution as the only way that Socialism might be able to move the USSR towards Communism, and the Stalinist line of Socialism in one country- the USSR was very precariously posed.. But the real drives for Collectivisation and Industrialisation started with the Five Year Plan in 1929.
A very interesting account of the years 1913-1938 is provided by "In Our Own Time" by Commander Steven Hall-King (I think that is the way round).. It was first published in 1935, and was later extended up to 1918.. No historian Commander Hall-King just saw that his life was lived in interesting times that called for skillful navigation; and the book brings out clearly the tides in the affairs of man.. And clearly 1824- to early 1828 were times when Capitalism and Liberalism seemed to be reviving: in fact there was an economic miracle in Germany, in spite of the lands and resources lost at Versailles.
These were times when life seemed very dangerous for the Soviet Union, for the Allies had already showed their hostility to the Communist regime once. Quite naturally, therefore, rather as the German region used state intervention to address its economic and military weakness during the Nineteenth Century the USSR felt the need to do something similar in the twenties having been subjected to Allied invasion just a few years before. As with Germany in that era, in the absence of an investing propertied and powerful Middle Class with quite the traditions of the Anglo-Saxon economies, the only was to leap forward into the "present day" Heroic Materialism was by government action...
And when the World Economy went into the slump in 1929 that was the method that was increasingly adopted by other countries.. including Germany... And it has been the way that we have run things since the war- as instanced by meetings like the recent G20.
Of course militarism was not the preserve of Germany in those days, but I think most people felt that at that time a potential German superpower was being created that was going to be a much greater threat than any previous one.. And the production figures for Soviet industry show the change of tack in the mid thirties from building up economic strength to building up military strength.
CassLink to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 27
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
Further to my last it seems appropriate to quote something that I wrote recently using what Professor Birnie of Edinburgh University wrote in his Economic History of Europe published in 1930:
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By 1930 those who supported more ambitious schemes of state involvement in the economy and the society were encouraged the First World War experience, and by the initial outcome of the revolution in Russia. So Professor Birnie could end his history with the promise of improvement offered by the recent Russian experience. In 1917, as in the great French Revolution, there was an initial moderate middle-class revolution, and then an uprising of the masses- peasant and proletarian. The result was revolutionary turbulence and civil war.
But then Lenin had forced through his New Economic Policy putting Russia back along what he considered to be the 鈥渘atural鈥 path of economic development for a country in its state of evolution. To Fabians Lenin鈥檚 鈥淪tate Capitalism....in which the working class state occupied the strategic points in the national economy and kept private capitalism firmly under control鈥 (page 277) was not dissimilar to the 鈥渃ommanding heights鈥 concept that they had developed. And Birnie went on:- 鈥淭he departments of economic activity which it has surrendered to private enterprise are not those in which huge fortunes can usually be made, and there is little danger that a new race of capitalists will arise to replace the old. It is the servant, not the master of the State.. Politically, the Revolution has...made the proletariat the governing class in Russia. It has established for the first time in history a working-class State. This event is of capital importance. The existence of a workers鈥 and peasants鈥 republic in eastern Europe can not be without its reactions and repercussions on the capitalist societies of the West, and the influence of Lenin must necessarily spread far beyond the boundaries of the State which he created.鈥
Perhaps Professor Birnie can be excused for not realising in 1930 the full significance of the Soviet Five Year Plans that had started up the previous year. But, as the 'thirties' descended into World Chaos and then Britain clawed its way out, it had already become accepted that any future British government would accept the politics of socialism with a small 鈥渟鈥. And the ground was well-prepared for the war-time National Government led by Winston Churchill to propose a more radical programme of state action as Britain faced up to the challenge of post-war reconstruction, building a new Britain as part of a 鈥淏rave New World鈥.
****
CassLink to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 28
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
suvo
Yes.. But that could have just been the kind of useless armies of millions of conscripted peasants that had failed during the First World War. There are armies and armies.聽
I don't think so. Red Army brass (Triandafilov, for example) had been already developing postulates of Blitzkrieg type of warfare and drafting armament requirements for it. It was not that the 5-year plans drove the militarization (AKA Collectivization and Industrialization); it was the militarization that drove the 5-year plans.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 29
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
Suvorovetz
But of course the Red Army had a very important internal mission- as I think you suggest there..
Moreover, to take your points, It is one thing to conceive of modern Blitzkrieg warfare, and another to have the industrial base capable of bringing concept on to the battle field and into the air.. This required not only material infrastructure but also a revolution in training and in scientific and technical education.
Of course Trotsky's Red Army- just like Mao Tse Tung's Communist Peasant army was also a means of the indoctrination and disseminisation of political ideas and Communist ideology.. And the first job of the army after any "coup d'etat" that calls itself a revolution, is to protect the revolution and its course from the majority.
The size was therefore- as in many developing countries where internal insecurity is often challenged by utter need- related not so much to the external threat, but to the internal one that might yet again get assistance from enemies abroad.
So I come back once more to my "favourite" quote from the official History of the Soviet Communist Party "The Red Army was used in every conceivable way to educate the peasants politically"... In other words the ellimination of the kulaks.
I still can not see that the USSR was a serious and aggressive threat to the post-war international order, in the way that Nazi Germany was.. And even the elimination of the kulaks may be seen in the context of a global crisis of smallholders described in the US context by John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath". By the late twenties commodities prices globally were reducing the money earning capacities of everyone and mechanisation and economies of large-scale alone seemed to make agricultural production of commodities profitable. (Not least because the larger capital investment- even state capital- offered more security in an "industry" in which a bountiful crop might prove a worse disaster than a natural disaster)
CassLink to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 30
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
Cass But of course the Red Army had a very important internal mission- as I think you suggest there..聽
The Big Breaking Point of 1927-29 occurred exactly upon Stalin accomplishing his 鈥渋nternal mission鈥, so to speak.
It is one thing to conceive of modern Blitzkrieg warfare, and another to have the industrial base capable of bringing concept on to the battle field and into the air.. This required not only material infrastructure but also a revolution in training and in scientific and technical education.聽
Exactly. All of which were part and parcel of the said program, including but not limited to mass military style athletic, shooting, flying and paratrooper training programs (GTO, Voroshilovsky strelok, etc, etc).Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 31
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
In my opinion, (And it only mine), the answer is no. Britain would have been better off if we had kept the pro-German Edward as King, then in 1939 remain a neutral but pro German country,聽
It's hardly only your opinion, I've certainly others made similar arguments. One of it flaws is the assumption that Britain declared war because of Poland. It didn't. It declared war because of Germany, i.e. of the clear and consistent policy of territorial aggrandizement of the Reich. Poland was merely the shock that exploded the ticking bomb.
I've never been a fan of what-if history. It is one thing to evaluate a choice made at one time point, study what options the actors had, and why they preferred one option over the others. It's quite another to construct a long chain of choices leading to a specific outcome -- with every decision point, the constructed result gets progressively less likely, and in the end is more based on wistful thinking than on any historic logic.
Not declaring war in September 1939 would not necessarily have produced the results you expect from it. Looking at the history of major European wars, even limiting it to wars after the loss of Calais in 1558, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is difficult for Britain to avoid being drawn in sooner or later: The 80-years war, the 30-years war, the Anglo-Dutch wars, the Anglo-Spanish war, the war of the Spanish succession, the Napoleonic wars, the Crimean war, the Great War, and numerous others. I think the only major European war that England or Britain managed to avoid was the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and then probably only because it was concluded so soon. The reality is that politically and geographically, Britain is part of Europe and always has been -- attempts to define it otherwise are decidedly a-historical, the product of post-1950s Euro-skepticism. And besides, even the USA, which in contrast by Britain *is* distant by an ocean, did not manage to avoid involvement in both world wars.
Even assuming that Germany was exclusively interested in Eastern Europe -- which is quite a stretch -- the reality was that the Axis contained two other partners, which sought to further their interests in the Mediterranean and the Far East, both at the cost of Britain. Even assuming that Hitler would have ditched his alliance with Italy and Japan for a peace with Britain: Historically Hitler couldn't even stop Italy from invading Greece, and the Japanese were well beyond his influence.
It's an illusion to assume that neutrality would have been cheap, although it would have been cheaper than war. Unless Britain would have been willing to be a disarmed German protectorate (which might very well have been Hitler's terms), neutrality would have required an adequate military force to protect it and ensure the independence of the country. As other nations scaled up their armed forces to fight in the conflict, even a neutral bystander would have been obliged to follow. At the very least we are talking about major fleet and air force expansions.
It's also an illusion to think that neutrality in WWII would somehow have preserved the British Empire. That process was already underway and unstoppable, even if the British had accepted Hitler's advice to shoot Gandhi and a few hundred of his followers. The war that really heralded the dissolution of the empire was WWI, not WWII, even though WWI actually enlarged the empire. In 1917 the British government saw itself obliged to respond to Indian support with an offer of government responsibility (shirking at the last moment from the term "self-government").Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 32
Posted by PaulRyckier (U1753522) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
Re: Messge 31?
Mutatis Mutandis,
great post as ever. Fully agree with each letter...
Kind regards and with great esteem,
Paul.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 33
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
Suvorovetz
The point is that you seem to assume that the militarism had something to do with Stalinism and Communism, whereas militarism had become "the way forward" especially during the 1860's when the British idea of small government allied to free markets economics and globalisation in the Cobden/Bright development on from Adam Smith, perished in the face of a new Darwinistic "Struggle for survival" kind of approach that seemed to be validated by the sudden upsurge of US and German power, and the prospect of the "Russian Giant" modernising in the same way.
Britain responded with a new Imperialism and, thanks in particular to a great generation of German historians, there was a new understanding of just how the Roman Empire had worked. In Britain as elsewhere the Roman model of peace through conquest, and submission, backed up by military garrisons, became part of the forward march of Civilization.
On the playing fields of Eton and other places, like my old school that produced Lawrence of Arabia the "Lost Generation" were miseducated to believe that war was the highest challenge known to man. And most such schools had their Army training corps. At the same time at the new National Elementary Schools the future "rank and file" Tommies were being similarly brainwashed.. It was generally accepted that the Arms races before the 1WW and the general mood of threat and counter-threat contributed to a feeling of almost inevitability over a war with Germany.
Many combatants ended the war disillusioned: but in the peace they soon understood the virtue of military solidarity and comradeship as the post-war years were marked by incidentsaround the world reflecting the brutalisation of the war on top of the brainwashing that had preceded it.
The twenties and thirties globally were decades in which that brutalising process was frequently made apparent e.g. General Macarthur at Washington "Thank God we have someone who still knows how to deal with a mob."
As for Britain, I have written on the pot-bellied Anglo-Saxon thread about the sudden shock of national unfitness in the mid-thirties when Britain started to realise that the hopes that it had been a War to End All Wars was dashed , and a national programme of fitness training was started.
CassLink to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 34
Posted by suvorovetz (U12273591) on Wednesday, 24th November 2010
Cass Suvorovetz
The point is that you seem to assume that the militarism had something to do with Stalinism and Communism, whereas militarism had become "the way forward" especially during the 1860's when the British idea of small government allied to free markets economics and globalisation in the Cobden/Bright development on from Adam Smith, perished in the face of a new Darwinistic "Struggle for survival" kind of approach that seemed to be validated by the sudden upsurge of US and German power, and the prospect of the "Russian Giant" modernising in the same way.聽
What in the world is "militarism" in the first place? Human history has involved warfare since like ever, and everybody was doing it to the best of their abilities, unless of course - like in the case of modern Sweden - they look for ways to fly below the radar and lower their ambition, or whatever. So, "militarism" is nothing other than using force to achieve one's political objectives.
My point is that - and everybody frequenting this board probably knows this by now, I suspect - that Stalin's departure from Marxist "world" and/or Trotsky's "permanent" revolution postulate was taken much too literally. When Stalin launched his militarization program, he did not even know exactly who and when he would be fighting, as Solonin quite convincingly showed in his article "Three Plans of Comrade Stalin," but that certainly does not mean that in 1927 he foresaw threats before they would materialize. Think of it this way, would you recommend spending NATO's combined military budget on preparing for the possibility of an extra-celestial conflict?Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 35
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 25th November 2010
suvorovetz
While "militarism" can be seen as one form of a thread that goes throughout history and presumably pre-history, the story of the Roman army and its success shows very clearly the advantage in combat terms of a militaristic approach over more traditional modes of fighting.
My 1904 dictionary defines "militarism" as "an excess of the fighting spirit".. and Cole and Postgate in "The Common People" started their survey of modern Britain when London sent its heavily Germanic "war machine" up to "deal with" the Jacobites who fought at Culloden according to age-old warrior and tribal methods often suitable to wilderness areas where "war machines" find it difficult to bring all their overwhelming force to bear.
"Military" it defines as- pertaining to soldiers or to warfare, warlike, becoming a soldier; engaged in the profession of arms"...But a major theme of English history has been the resistance of the people to any concept of a "standing army"- and with it the existence of professional soldiers.. The lessons of Cromwell and the New Model Army confirmed that gut feeling, for mercenaries who had learned their trade in Europe knew that it was in their interests to prevent a rediscovery of English peace.
As I said before in was in the 1860's as Britain absorbed the lessons of the Crimea, and the success of arms elsewhere, that the Northcote Trevelyan enquiry investigated just how Britain could establish a "profession of arms".. Along with the developing Civil Services for Britain and India, this became a career for a small elite corps. But in those increasingly dangerous and challenging times it was still understood that, in the English tradition, an army of requisite size would be created once it was becoming obvious that Britain was likely - as Mutatis has pointed out- to find itself unable to stay out of wars that were already going on.
Hence I think it was in the Munich Crisis that Churchill- in the political wilderness, but very much addressing the nation- called for National Service at its highest level in the English tradition.
Thinking of that tradition, I have just read a biography of Group Captain Cheshire, the most highly decorated member of the RAF from the 2WW, and the British military observer at Nagasaki. On both sides of his family he had ancestors who had fought for their country, and/or in this case both sides in the Civil War. The Yorkshire Barstow's had more of a family tradition, than the Cheshires, but as Leonard was being born his father was in a basket slung under a balloon on the Western Front checking out the range of the Allied artillery through his binoculars, while wondering just when the Germans would be able to shoot him down.
By profession he was a barrister and a law lecturer, and after the war he went back to lecturing at Oxford University. His son Leonard was studying law at Oxford, and finally discovered the joys of flying in the students' flying club- immediately showing a very special talent. But when he graduated in 1939 he was destined to follow his father into the law.. Then in the family tradition he volunteered to "do his bit"- and completed 103 bombing missions with singular distinction.
After the war he was appalled that the Civilization that the war had been sought to save, seemed to have been largely destroyed, and immediately sought after ways to, as the Queen recently put it, "wage peace"..He found himself taking responsibility for the nursing and care of an old man who had volunteered for his new self-sufficient "colony" experiment, who was terminally ill and all alone in this world. From one came two etc, and he founded the first Cheshire 麻豆约拍 for the terminally ill.
When the biography was written in 1955 Cheshire had just been very seriously ill, so I Googled to find the epilogue. Cheshire married Sue Ryder who had started homes for concentration camp survivors: and the Cheshire-Ryder 麻豆约拍s are now one of the largest providers of care homes for the terminally ill and the seriously disabled in the world.
That is an example of an English "man of war who was perhaps "militant" but not "militaristic".
CassLink to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 36
Posted by Nik (U1777139) on Thursday, 25th November 2010
Casseroleon:
"""While "militarism" can be seen as one form of a thread that goes throughout history and presumably pre-history, the story of the Roman army and its success shows very clearly the advantage in combat terms of a militaristic approach over more traditional modes of fighting. """
Rome's advantage was purely political and geostrategic in the sence that its diplomacy had much more hindsight than that of all others and could find all the allies needed to support the expansion of Rome in a given region prior to Rome' s introduction there. Before engaging in military campaigns in Greece, Rom was allied (or treated preferrentially) already by more than 60% of Greek states! Same thing in Gaul. So there is no secret how they expanded. With more than 300,000 soldiers available and with more in the waiting among the numerous friends, allies and vassals they had usually 10 times more army than their average enemy (apart Carthagenians who too did not withstand for long having to pay for large armies...) all while they were taking 1 enemy at the time.
However, seen from a close up, the Roman military itself was nothing spectacular and certainly one of the least performing armies of antiquity in terms of results per ressource. They managed to lose almost all their first-contact battles, about half of their given battles and often they won either by internal treason among enemies (like in the wars agains the Macedonian state) but by continuous defeats simply by friction and wear of their opponents who did not have their ressources to go on forever (like in the wars against the South Italy Greeks and their ally Epirot Greeks, or the well known example of the Carthagenians).
When Roman massive ressources reduced in number, its power waned quickly. Roman army became highly effective by the time Roman Empire was already converted to Eastern Roman Empire - who had the most effective per ressource pre-gunpowder army. Eastern Romans fought as many enemies in any random 1 century of the 10 centuries of their existence as Rome faced throughout its 5 centuries of existence all while maintaining the 1/7th of the standing army compared to 1st century A.D. Rome - this defending the 1/2nd, 1/3rd of the previous Roman Empire (against 10 times more enemies each 10 times more dangerous than the random barbarians Romans had to face).
I am abslutely vertical in this. I have discussed this with tactics' specialists and they are 100% adamant on that. Roman army was not particularly efficient per ressource.Link to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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Message 37
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Thursday, 25th November 2010
Nik
Thanks for that- but:
"Efficient per resource" says a great deal..
As I infer, one of the reasons why the English have been traditionally hostile to militarism is that it is very expensive.. As I understand it the Roman Empire had a huge military infrastructure with permanently manned fortifications and rear garrisons in networks that could bring "ready-made" armies into the field. It probably would not stand up to cost-benefit analysis.
Coming to modern militarism- Recent coverage of Burma has suggested that military expenditure in that militarist regime equals 50% of GDP. A couple of days ago I saw a feature on Southern Sudan, which hopes to become an independent country via a referendum soon. One of the "national" politicians justified the expenditure of 40% of GDP on the military as appropriate in that stage of national development. And when the USA was as I have just watched on a programme about "The American Dream" producing about 30% of all production of Earth in the 1950's, Cold War expenditure on its military stance in a lifestyle based upon fear and the shadow of an nuclear holocaust was at least 20% of GDP. This kind of commitment continued until the collapse of Communism- and the problems of underemployment and unemployment of Land and Labour especially in a US economy becuase Capital could find better returns elsewhere in the new globalisation where it could reap the spoils of victory.
Estimates for the SU go up to 60%+ of GDP having to be spent on maintaining the Cold War condition of MAD.
The story of Leonard Cheshire and his war-time experience suggests that English approach- though it almost invariably means that England gets off to a bad start in any war,means that this country is then able to tap into some of the best qualities of the British people in a "fighting force of all the talents"- which includes insight, ingenuity, invention, individualism and genuine teamwork- all of which Cheshire exemplified, and which are often dissadvantaged within a militaristic tradition.
CassLink to this forum: Should Britain have declared war when it did?
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