“The British Government and the Rhineland Crisis”
Benjamin Thomas Reynolds
Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements
of the degree of Master of History (by Thesis Only)
October 2010
School of Historical Studies
The University of Melbourne
Abstract
The purpose of this thesis is to re-examine the historiographical debate concerning the response of the British Government to the German remilitarization of the Rhineland on 7 March 1936 in light of the recent resurgence of ‘traditional’ interpretations of the crisis. The traditional view argues that the Rhineland Crisis represented an opportunity for Britain and France to prevent the Second World War by using their armed forces to intimidate Hitler. By not opposing the weaker Wehrmacht in 1936, the British and French response, it is argued, encouraged Hitler’s later foreign policy demands. Despite ‘revisionist’ writers having uncovered evidence that Hitler was not prepared to withdraw his forces from the Rhineland and that efforts to do so would have provoked a war in Europe in 1936, the revisionist view has enjoyed a recent resurgence. This thesis investigates Britain’s social, economic, military and diplomatic situation between 1919 and 1936 and explores how these affected Britain’s response to the Rhineland Crisis. The thesis makes extensive use of archival records, especially the minutes from the Cabinet meetings held during the crisis. My analysis of this material leads to the conclusion that because of the social and economic crises of the inter- war years and the risk of simultaneous conflicts with other powers Britain did not possess sufficient armed forces to risk war with Germany in March 1936; the efforts of the Cabinet to reach a negotiated settlement can therefore be regarded as justified. I also conclude that Hitler would have resorted to war in March 1936 in the event of a military response to his move.
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This is to certify that
(i) The thesis comprises only my original work towards the Masters.
(ii) Due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used,
(iii) The thesis is 32,436 words in length, inclusive of footnotes, but exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION...... 1
CHAPTER I: MORE RELUCTANT TO GO TO WAR ...... 11
Introduction ...... 11
Fear of War and Pacifism...... 11
The League of Nations and Public Opinion ...... 14
Poverty ...... 17
The First World War and National Debt ...... 21
Unemployment and Expenditure ...... 24
Economic Recovery ...... 28
Conclusion ...... 30
CHAPTER II: A DANGER EVEN TO THE CAUSE OF PEACE ...... 32
Introduction...... 32 Army...... 33
Navy ...... 35
Air Force...... 37
Japan in Asia ...... 39
Germany in Europe ...... 42
Italy in Africa ...... 44
External and Internal Imperial Threats ...... 46
Communist Subversion ...... 49
Conclusion ...... 51
CHAPTER III: NEITHER THE MEANS NOR THE HEART ...... 53
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Conclusion ...... 66
CHAPTER IV: REVISING THE TRADITION ...... 68
BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 72
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Introduction
On 7 March 1936 the first of around 36,500 German troops, acting under the direct orders of Adolf Hitler, crossed the frontier into the previously demilitarized Rhineland. These, added to the 20,000 Landespolizei already stationed in the region, took the German presence in the zone to around 56,000. 1 This force contained no bomber aircraft or armoured fighting vehicles and was, so the Germans claimed, ‘in no way offensive in character.’2 The troops sent to the Rhineland were ‘symbolic’ and ‘acted only symbolically.’3 In the years before the demilitarization of the Rhineland Germany had stationed over 220,000 troops in the zone.4 In Germany there was ‘tremendous enthusiasm’ for the move. 5 Outside of Germany the response was far less enthusiastic. Hitler sought to calm the ‘hostile [international] reaction’ that accompanied the remilitarization of the Rhineland by claiming that Germany had ‘no territorial claims in Europe’ and by combining the move with a series of peace proposals which would satisfy Britain’s key security concerns. 6 Germany would agree to non- aggression pacts with Britain, France and Belgium, an air pact with the other western powers and, most importantly, a return to the League of Nations which would further ease British fears of German intentions in Central Europe. 7 Germany’s unilateral action, blatantly disregarding both the terms of the forced Treaty of Versailles and the freely negotiated terms of the Locarno Treaty, fundamentally undermined the security of Western Europe. Konstantin von Neurath8 claimed that ‘the creation of a fait accompli’ was necessary because ‘in view of all [Germany’s] experiences in recent years, [she] could have expected no results from negotiations with France.’ 9 In response to Germany’s violation of the Treaties of Versailles and Locarno, Britain, despite the clamouring of the French, sought to ‘appease’ the Germans and secure a negotiated settlement to the crisis. Britain’s reaction—or lack of
1 Though the War Office believed that the figure was actually ‘probably below 50,000.’ German Troops in the Rhineland, 12 March 1936. WO 190/391. Sourced from the National Archives, London. 2 Werner von Blomberg to the German Foreign Ministry, 23 March 1936. M. Lambert, Documents on German Foreign Policy Series C, Volume V (London: HMSO, 1966), 254. Henceforth DGFP Series C. 3 Alfred Jodl quoted from International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Volume XV (Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal, 1947), 358. Henceforth TMWC. 4 Konstantin von Neurath to the German Embassy in Britain. 14 March 1936. DGFP Series C, Vol. V, 151. 5 TMWC, Vol. XXXI, 589. 6 Hitler quoted from TMWC, Vol. I, 196. 7 Neurath in a telegram sent to the German ambassadors in the other Locarno countries to announce the remilitarization of the Rhineland, 5 March 1936. DGFP Series C, Vol. V, 11; Anthony Eden, memorandum on Germany and the Locarno Treaty, 8 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 4. 8 German Minister of Foreign Affairs 1932-1938. 9 Neurath in a telegraph sent 6 March 1936 to all German Embassies announcing the German move into the Rhineland. DGFP Series C, Vol. V, 23. 1
reaction—to the German move immediately became, and has remained, a source of controversy.
In the historiography of the Rhineland Crisis two distinct interpretations have emerged: the ‘traditional’ and the ‘revisionist’ views. Supporters of the traditional view interpret the Rhineland Crisis as a missed opportunity to prevent the Second World War and argue that if Britain had firmly opposed the remilitarization of the Rhineland she could have prevented Hitler’s future aggressive demands. This view rose to prominence during the Second World War and was widely accepted as an accurate assessment of the crisis until the late sixties. Between the late sixties and the early eighties the traditional view was challenged through the use of archival material that disproved the notion championed by the traditional view that a firm British response would have prevented war. Recently, however, the traditional view of the crisis has resurfaced, complete with the claim that Hitler was prepared to withdraw if he had been firmly opposed. These later accounts ignore the evidence uncovered in the sixties and seventies of Hitler’s willingness to risk war to preserve the new status of the Rhineland. In 2008 Patrick Buchanan underlined the swing back towards the traditional view and reopened the debate on the importance of the remilitarization of the Rhineland by referring to the crisis as ‘the last chance to stop Hitler without war.’10 By means of a thorough examination of Britain’s social, economic, military and diplomatic condition in the inter-war years and a close reading of the minutes of the British Cabinet meetings held during the Rhineland Crisis this thesis will re-evaluate the response of the British Government to the events of 7 March 1936. I will argue that the evidence strongly supports the revisionist claim that a firm British response to the remilitarization of the Rhineland would have resulted in war in 1936.
The early historical analyses of the Rhineland Crisis overwhelmingly argue that through their inaction in March 1936 the British missed an opportunity to confront and discipline a weak Germany. Military action here, so the traditionalists argue, would have prevented the Second World War. Following their successful action in the Rhineland the leading Nazis began ‘laying the groundwork for further aggressive action.’ 11 Winston Churchill in the late forties argued that had the Rhine bridgeheads been reoccupied ‘until compliance [with the treaties freely signed by Germany] had been secured, without there being any possibility of effective resistance or likelihood of bloodshed….the Second World
10 P. J. Buchanan, Churchill, Hitler and “The Unnecessary War” (New York: Crown, 2008), 181. 11 Thomas Dodd, prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials. TMWC Vol. II, 240. 2
War could have been delayed indefinitely.’12 Hitler, Churchill claimed, would have been ‘compelled’ to withdraw from the Rhineland if Britain and France had acted.13 Cato14, also writing in the forties, supported this claim. 15 The idea of Hitler’s vulnerability grew principally from French intelligence from the period and the later testimony of leading Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials.16 Alfred Jodl17 admitted that he and other German Generals had ‘the uneasy feeling of a gambler whose entire fortune was at stake’ during the crisis.18 Joachim von Ribbentrop19 believed that an Anglo-French military response in March 1936 ‘would have placed the Reich in a critical situation.’20 Hjalmar Schacht21 believed that Hitler was ‘resolved to withdraw’ due to the ‘somewhat menacing attitude’ adopted by the French and would ‘do anything rather than have a war.’22 Hermann Göring admitted to being ‘worried’ that the remilitarization of the Rhineland would lead to war.23 The evidence of these senior German figures, given under interrogation over a decade after the Rhineland Crisis and facing execution over their complicity in the outbreak of the Second World War, was accepted as fact and criticism of Britain’s inaction over the crisis grew.
During the fifties and early sixties the traditional view of the Rhineland Crisis was advanced and developed. Charles Mowat, writing in 1955, claimed that strong action against Germany in 1936 ‘might have prevented the Second World War,’ even though ‘the British public did not clamour for such action; but its temper in October [1936] showed that it would have responded to a strong lead from the Government.’24 In his memoirs Anthony Eden25 lamented Britain’s inaction, believing that Britain and France should have attempted the ‘impossible’ and risked war with Germany.26 Eden qualifies this statement by admitting that
12 W. S. Churchill, The Second World War Volume One: Gathering Storm (Sydney: Halstead, 1948), 114. 13 Ibid., 151. 14 Pseudonym of Michael Foot, Frank Owen and Peter Howard. 15 Cato, Guilty Men (London: Gollancz, 1940), 76. 16 Lord Halifax claimed during the 11 March 1936 Cabinet meeting that ‘France and Belgium sincerely believed that Germany would not fight’ in March 1936. CAB 23/83, 11. 17 Chief of the Operations Staff of the Armed Forces High Command. 18 Jodl, during the Nuremberg Trials. TMWC Vol. XV, 357. 19 German Ambassador to Britain 1936-1938. 20 François de Menthon quoting from Ribbentrop’s Nuremberg testimony. TMWC Vol. V, 392. 21 German Minister of Economics 1934-1944. 22 Wilhelm Vocke, member of the Executive Board of the Reichsbank, reporting a conversation with Schacht during the Nuremberg Trials. TMWC Vol. XIII, 63. 23 Hermann Göring, TMWC Vol. IX, 458. 24 C. L. Mowat, Britain Between the Wars (London: Methuen, 1968), 557. 25 British Foreign Secretary 1935-1938. 26 A. Eden, Facing the Dictators: The Eden Memoirs (London: Cassell, 1962), 366. 3
‘academically speaking, there is little dispute that Hitler should have been called to order [in March 1936] but nobody was prepared to do it, literally nobody.’27
During the later sixties opposition to this traditional interpretation appeared. Frederick Smith, in his biography of Lord Halifax,28 claims that to support the traditional interpretation is ‘to ignore the conditions in which [the Rhineland Crisis] took place.’29 Britain was, at this time, ‘not thinking of Germany’ and was instead ‘engaged in watching as helpless spectators the agony of Abyssinia and the advance of [Benito] Mussolini’s victorious armies.’30 In the late sixties and seventies the traditional interpretation of the Rhineland Crisis was further challenged by Donald Watt and James Emmerson. Watt, using extensive material from the German archives, discovered detailed plans for a ‘fighting retreat’ from the Rhineland in the event of Anglo-French action. 31 According to Watt’s findings, Germany would not have peacefully withdrawn from the Rhineland and referred to the assumption that Germany would withdraw as a ‘myth’ which had ‘never seriously been questioned.’32 There was, for Watt, ‘no question of resistance not being offered’ by Germany. 33 The ‘myth’ of a missed opportunity to avoid the Second World War was thus exploded. According to this revisionist view, firm action against Germany would have resulted in the very conflict that earlier writers believed it would have averted. Emmerson’s work built upon this idea and expanded it by assessing the actions of the British, French and Germans in the wake of the events of 7 March 1936 to further undermine the traditional view of the Rhineland Crisis.
While Emmerson thoroughly explains France’s military and economic weakness during the crisis, Britain’s position is only partially described. Though Emmerson recognises that for Britain to resort to military sanctions in March 1936 she would have to ‘take up non- existent arms, in opposition to public opinion’ and alludes to the risk that war with Germany might provoke simultaneous conflicts with Italy and Japan, he provides little explanation of the social and economic reasons for Britain’s military weakness or why simultaneous wars were possible.34 The British public’s indifference to the crisis is explained as a consequence of ‘guilt over the “dictat” of Versailles,’ not as the combined result of the growth in
27 Eden, Dictators, 366-367. 28 Lord Halifax, holder of numerous important political offices including Lord Privy Seal and Foreign Secretary. 29 F. Smith, Halifax: The Life of Lord Halifax (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1965), 350. 30 Ibid. 31 D. C. Watt, “German Plans for the Remilitarization of the Rhineland: A Note,” Journal of Contemporary History 1, (4): 196. 32 Ibid., 193. 33 Ibid., 199. 34 J. T. Emmerson, The Rhineland Crisis, 7 March 1936 (London: Temple Smith, 1977), 69, chapter 3. 4
acceptance of pacifist ideas in Britain, the horrors of the First World War or as a reaction to the unemployment crisis of the inter-war years.35 No mention at all is made of the Imperial unrest that plagued Britain in the mid-thirties. The British Government, in Emmerson’s phrase, were ‘prepared to accept a remilitarized Rhineland and negotiate with Germany as if nothing had happened’ because the Baldwin Government was occupied with ‘domestic and Abyssinian affairs.’36 As shall be seen in Chapter 3 of this thesis, this conclusion does not match the Cabinet record of the period. While Emmerson is correct in concluding that the Rhineland Crisis only became a crucial factor in the origins of the Second World War ‘in retrospect,’ his failure to provide a detailed examination of Britain’s social, economic, military and diplomatic situation during the inter-war years allows room for the questionable argument that Britain, through the use of military sanctions in March 1936, could have prevented the Second World War. Emmerson himself, though agreeing that Germany would have resorted to war in March 1936, seems to suggest that Britain should have acted against Germany. He argues that ‘it is hard to escape the conclusion that [during the Rhineland Crisis] there was only one winner: Germany.’ 37 Yet Britain herself can be considered a victor. She successfully avoided a war with Germany in 1936 that her public and military were unprepared for and which, given the delicate state of international affairs in the mid- thirties, might have precipitated action against the British Empire by Italy or Japan.
Esmonde Robertson’s work from the sixties and seventies views the German move as an effort to exploit the weakened ties between Italy and Britain.38 Robertson sees Hitler, rather than being uncertain of his move, as the driving force behind the remilitarization of the Rhineland after he emphatically informed his inner circle on 12 February 1936 that ‘the hour for the remilitarization of the Rhineland had come.’39 Germany understood that Britain’s Navy could not at the same time oppose Germany in Europe and Italy in Africa.40 Hitler had, according to Robertson’s work in the sixties, subtly probed the likely response of other countries, especially Italy, on their reaction to a change in status of the Rhineland.41 The German General Staff believed that Britain would not implement military sanctions because
35 Ibid., 142. 36 Ibid., 115, 80. 37 Ibid., 236. 38 E. M. Robertson, “Hitler und die Sanktionen des Völkerbunds. Mussolini und die Besetzung des Rheinlands,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 26. Jahrg,. 2. H. (1978): 254. 39 Ibid. 40 Ibid., 261. 41 E. M. Robertson, “Zur Wiederbesetzung des Rheinlandes 1936,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 10 Jahrg., 2. H (1962): 186. 5
the Rhineland was ‘not a vital British interest.’42 Through a combination of ‘bluff and force’ Hitler achieved a major foreign policy victory that represented a ‘decisive moment’ in the inter-war period; yet the idea that Hitler was prepared to back down if opposed is conspicuous in Robertson’s work by its absence.43
The work of Eva Haraszti in the eighties, like that of Emmerson and Watt, supported the idea that Germany would have resorted to war to preserve her gains in the Rhineland. She argued that ‘the invasion of the Rhineland had been prepared for in such a planned and comprehensive way’ and the ‘probable attitudes of France’s military and political leaders so accurately gauged’ that it would have been a ‘miracle’ if France had pursued military sanctions.44 Haraszti claimed that Dirk Forster45 provided Hitler with information on ‘the weakness of the [Albert] Sarraut Government,’ the likely response of the French public, and informed Hitler of the ‘sureness of success’ of a German move into the Rhineland in 1936.46 Haraszti also highlights advice given by Ulrich von Hassell47 to Hitler that March 1936 was the ‘psychological moment’ for a march into the Rhineland as ‘Britain was militarily unprepared’ while France was so ‘incapacitated by internal problems’ that Germany ‘need not reckon on meeting any military resistance.’48 While Haraszti highlights the weakness of Britain’s land forces and acknowledges that the problem was ‘aggravated’ by ‘low levels of recruitment,’ the decline in popularity of the British Army is not fully explained.49 Britain’s military weakness is understood as being the result of her leaders’ failure to appreciate ‘the general development of armed forces in the fifteen years after Versailles’ and the reluctance of the Government to provide adequate funds to the armed forces.50 Britain’s socio-economic difficulties, vital in explaining the British Government’s failure to provide such funds in the inter-war period, are ignored. The slow speed of Britain’s rearmament in the mid-thirties is criticised, and the ability of British industry to ‘if necessary’ increase production of armaments is highlighted, but the effect of an accelerated rearmament programme on Britain’s recovery from the Great Depression is overlooked.51 Though the Cabinet record is extensively investigated in Haraszti’s work, the focus is primarily on the minutes and
42 Ibid., 183. 43 Ibid,. 188. 44 E. H. Haraszti, The Invaders: Hitler Occupies the Rhineland (Budapest: Akademiai Kidao, 1983), 36. 45 Counsellor at the German Embassy in Paris. 46 Haraszti, Invaders, 67. 47 German Ambassador to Italy 1933-1938. 48 Haraszti, Invaders, 67. 49 Ibid., 101. 50 Ibid., 102. 51 Ibid., 104. 6
memoranda relating to foreign policy, ignoring crucial social and economic concerns mentioned during the Cabinet meetings. Without a detailed account of Britain’s socio- economic situation, and proof of the extent to which these factors influenced the Cabinet during the crisis, a case can still be made to criticise the inaction of the British Government following the remilitarization of the Rhineland.
The German historiography of the Rhineland is far less uniform than the English. Klaus Hildebrand claims that von Neurath ‘advised Hitler against withdrawing’ when he ‘was nervously considering it.’52 Speer seemed to verify this interpretation and validate the earlier testimony from Nuremberg by claiming in his autobiography that Hitler waited ‘nervously’ for the response of the Allies after the events of 7 March 1936 because Germany had ‘no army worth mentioning’ and would have been ‘easily defeated’ in the event of an Anglo- French military response. 53 Despite these works, many other German language accounts dispute Hitler’s supposed wavering and support the revisionist stance. Franz Knipping sees Hitler as a ‘shrewd tactician’ who through the ‘careful timing of each act’ and his efforts to ‘justify each action’ while ‘including peace proposals for the future’ effectively ‘took the wind from the sails’ of those who demanded a firm response to his machinations.54 Rather than reconsider his decision, Hitler had ‘weighed the consequences of the remilitarization of the Rhineland’ and ‘did not count’ on sanctions being introduced by France who, because of her ‘militarily and politically weak position,’ was becoming ‘more and more dependent on England.’ 55 Max Braubach also sees the remilitarization of the Rhineland as an ‘opportunistic’ move taken to exploit the diplomatic circumstances of the mid-thirties. 56 Though these sources do, generally, support the idea that Germany was willing to risk war over the Rhineland, they fail to explain the reasons for Britain’s reluctance to vigorously oppose Germany in 1936.
Despite the studies of Watt, Emmerson, Robertson and Haraszti the majority of the work produced in English since the eighties has continued to perceive the Rhineland Crisis as a missed opportunity to prevent the Second World War. Alastair Horne refers to the remilitarization of the Rhineland as the ‘watershed between 1919 and 1939’ and believed that
52 K. Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich (London: Batsford, 1973), 42-43. 53 Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (New York: Macmillan, 1970), 72. 54 F. Knipping, “Frankreich in Hitler’s Aussenpolitik 1933-1939,” in Hitler, Deutschland und die Mächte: Materialien zur Aussenpolitik des Dritten Reiches, ed. M. Funke, 620 (Düsseldorf: Droste Verlag, 1977). 55 Ibid., 621. 56 Quoted from a review of Max Braubach, Der Einmarsch Deutscher Trupen in die Entmilitarisierte Zone am Rhein im März 1936 written by D. C. Watt. International Affairs 32, no. 4 (1956): 487. 7
‘no other single event in this period was more loaded with dire significance.’57 Horne also argues that a British Expeditionary Force of the kind deployed following Hitler’s move into Poland would in 1936 have been sufficient to force the Wehrmacht, a ‘feeble infant’ at this time, into retreat and compel Hitler to order a withdrawal.58 This, in Horne’s opinion, would have resulted in Hitler’s removal from power. 59 Keith Eubank claims that with Hitler overthrown, ‘there would never have been a World War Two.’60 Frank McDonough suggests that the British Cabinet viewed the Rhineland Crisis as ‘the righting of an injustice left behind by the Versailles Treaty’ rather than ‘an act of unprovoked aggression.’ 61 McDonough criticises this as a ‘flawed judgement.’62 Buchanan’s recent work is, alongside these other interpretations, evidence that the revisionist case has not firmly established itself. The idea persists that by failing to respond with military sanctions during the Rhineland Crisis the British Cabinet contributed significantly to the causes of the Second World War. What is so often ignored by supporters of the traditional interpretation of the Rhineland Crisis is the extent to which Britain’s social, economic and military condition influenced her actions during the crisis. The serious external and internal threats that the British Government faced during the thirties, her under strength military forces and the belief that Hitler would not withdraw from the Rhineland peacefully add support to the view that a negotiated settlement was the correct response to the crisis. Only by ignoring these factors can a case can be made against Britain’s leaders for their inaction. When these issues are taken into consideration the decision by the British Cabinet in 1936 to seek a negotiated settlement appears in a different light. Britain, in her weakened state, could not expect to resist an enemy that could spend so lavishly on armaments. Firm British action might have also precipitated simultaneous Italian and Japanese intrigues in Africa and Asia respectively. To avoid war with Germany over the Rhineland was therefore to avoid the risk of three simultaneous wars across the globe with formidable enemies, wars which the British public, military and economy were unprepared for in 1936.
The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate the traditional view of the Rhineland Crisis, which claims that British inaction contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War, a view that still prevails despite the evidence uncovered by Watts, Emmerson and Haraszti that
57 A. Horne, To Lose A Battle: France 1940 (London: Papermac, 1990), 85. 58 Ibid., 82. 59 Ibid. 60 K. Eubank, The Origins of World War II (Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson, 1990), 154. 61 F. McDonough, Neville Chamberlain, Appeasement and the British Road to War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 27-28. 62 Ibid., 161. 8
Germany was prepared to resort to war to secure her position in the Rhineland. This thesis intends to go further than these previous revisionist works by demonstrating that due to Britain’s inter-war social, economic, military and diplomatic situation, inaction was the correct response to the crisis. I will argue that the British Government understood that inaction in response to the reoccupation of the Rhineland might simply have encouraged Hitler to make more audacious moves in the future and would therefore merely have delayed war with Germany. To prove this hypothesis I will predominantly rely on archival material such as the documents contained in the Documents on British Foreign Policy and Documents on German Foreign Policy series and the Cabinet record of the period. Over a thousand Cabinet papers have been sifted through and over a hundred of these individual minutes and memoranda have been cited. In addition the records of the British Parliamentary Debates, articles from The Times (London) and numerous diaries and autobiographies of important figures from the period have been consulted. This wealth of primary source material facilitates a contextualized analysis of the Rhineland Crisis. These sources will be used to demonstrate that because of the socio-economic legacy of the First World War and the Great Depression, Britain could not maintain the armed forces necessary to vigorously oppose the remilitarization of the Rhineland and, due to the dangerous international situation that had developed by 1936, could not risk a war with Germany that was likely to lead to simultaneous conflicts with Japan and Italy. By building on the analyses of Watt, Emmerson, Robertson and Haraszti, and showing the utter unpreparedness of the British armed forces for such war in 1936, the argument that the remilitarization of the Rhineland represented the last opportunity to prevent the Second World War will be challenged. To defend the British reaction ‘it is essential to project ourselves into the past if we are to gain any understanding of why these apparent follies were committed.’63 By examining Britain’s social, economic, military and diplomatic circumstances and showing how these factors undermined the ability of the British to guarantee their domestic and Imperial security I will argue that the decision of the British Government to seek a negotiated settlement to the crisis was justified.
This thesis is divided into three main chapters. The socio-economic chapter assesses how the legacy of the First World War influenced Britain’s people and economy in the inter- war years. The public’s fear of another war, their growing interest in pacifism and the extent of poverty in British society during the inter-war years are investigated. As well as these social factors the first chapter examines how Britain’s vastly increased national debt,
63 Smith, Halifax, 354.
9 expenditure on unemployment and the Great Depression influenced British fiscal policy in the inter-war years. Chapter Two considers how these socio-economic factors influenced the British Government’s military expenditure during the twenties and thirties and details the global threats to Britain’s national and Imperial security that developed during the thirties. These two contextual chapters are followed by a chapter dedicated to assessing the impact of these factors on the decision making of the British Government during the Rhineland Crisis. Finally, the thesis concludes with a brief chapter assessing the historiographical debate in light of the conclusions drawn from the preceding chapters.
10
CHAPTER I: MORE RELUCTANT TO GO TO WAR
Introduction
To explain the inaction of the British Government following the remilitarization of the Rhineland Britain’s social and economic condition must be considered. The roots of Britain’s response to the crisis can be traced back almost two decades to the aftermath of the First World War which undermined both the public’s support for continental adventures and the nation’s economy. The horrors of war, and the fear of another war, stimulated interest among the British public in pacifism, which in turn encouraged support for a foreign policy based on non-military sanctions implemented through the newly created the League of Nations. Through this supranational body collective security and united financial pressures could be used to discourage aggression. The British public overwhelmingly supported these new ideas where previously they had favoured military sanctions. This shift was further encouraged by the problem of mass unemployment in Britain during the inter-war years. While so many struggled on unemployment benefit Government expenditure on defence was resented. Government proposals to lower benefits produced an angry reaction from the public. As well as prompting these social shifts, the First World War also had a damaging effect on Britain’s economy. Between 1918 and 1936 the British economy experienced severe difficulties which were either a direct result of, or accentuated by, the First World War. The cost of the conflict had been astronomical and created problems for the inter-war Chancellors of the Exchequer which were worsened by poor economic policies, declining exports and increasing unemployment. This situation was exacerbated by the Great Depression. Unemployment, debt repayments and a decline in her export trade together created the need for drastic Government economies in the inter-war years. Cuts in spending, particularly on unemployment benefit and the armed forces, were necessary to prevent financial catastrophe. The public would not support rapid rearmament during a period of mass unemployment, and the Government could not realistically afford it due to Britain’s weakened financial position. These points will now be considered in detail to explain the inaction of the British Government following the remilitarization of the Rhineland.
11
Fear of War and Pacifism
The First World War caused death and injury to British troops on an unprecedented scale. Over 600,000 were killed while nearly 2,000,000 were disabled and required assistance from the Ministry of Pensions after the armistice.64 Any Government which provoked another war between the highly industrialised European powers risked repeating this horror as their troops again faced ‘a rain of molten steel, or poison gas, or [other] implements of destruction.’65 Instead of a heroic adventure, the image of war became ‘rats [and] the stench of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench,’ or being ‘frozen alive, with dead men for comforters.’ 66 As well as the horrors of the trenches, the development of aerial warfare during the First World War meant that for the first time the British public were vulnerable to attack. To avoid war was to avoid an attack from the air. Benito Mussolini warned ominously in February 1935 that ‘London was so vast and offered such a concentrated target that it was a temptation as an objective for a [foreign] air force.’67 During the inter-war years Britain had, in Churchill’s opinion, because of her inadequate anti-aircraft defences, ‘become the most vulnerable’ of all nations.68 The potential indiscriminate slaughter of aerial warfare and the prospect of death on a scale greater even than the Somme or Passchendaele had a great ‘psychological effect’ upon the British public which made them ‘more reluctant to go to war.’69 This social shift allowed the previously unpopular philosophy of pacifism to attract a wider audience and increased the restrictions imposed on the foreign policy of the British Government during the inter-war years.
In 1914 pacifists had felt ‘utter isolation.’70 While so many sacrificed for their country during the First World War those who objected to service ceased being objects ‘for amusement, ridicule or toleration’ and instead became the victims of ‘bitter and unreasoning
64 “Nearly 26 Million War Casualties,” The Times (London), January 1, 1919. Henceforth The Times; Major George Tryon following a question in the British House of Commons on medical and surgical treatment for those disabled by the First World War held 26 July 1923. 167 HC Debs 5s Col. 680. 65 James Maxton during a debate on defence held 11 March 1935 299 HC Debs 5s Col. 98-99. 66 S. Sassoon, Poems Newly Selected 1916-1935 (London: Faber and Faber, 1940), 28; Wilfred Owen in a letter to his mother on 7 August 1917. J. Breen, W. Owen: Selected Poetry and Prose (London: Routledge, 1988), 135. 67 Conversation between Eric Drummond and Mussolini reported to Simon on 22 February 1935. W. N. Medlicott, Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939 Second Series Volume XII (London: HMSO, 1977), 532. Henceforth DBFP Second Series. 68 Churchill during a debate on the 1935 Air Estimates held 19 March 1935. 299 HC Debs 5s Col. 1063. 69 Wing-Commander Archibald James, ibid., 1083. 70 Clifford Allen, “Pacifism Then and Now,” in We did not Fight: 1914-1918 Experiences of War Resisters, ed. J. Bell, 26 (London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1935). 12
hatred.’ 71 After the horrors of the First World War and the alteration in the popular perception of warfare pacifism became increasingly prevalent in British culture and gained the support of ‘films, plays, novels and all the arts of the publicity agent.’72 Due to the politicisation of war following the introduction of conscription in Britain in 1916 pacifism also benefited from the ‘radicalization of previously apolitical British intellectuals.’73 During a February 1933 meeting the Oxford University Student Union announced that it would consider adopting a motion announcing that it would under no circumstances ‘fight for its King and Country.’74 This debate of intellectuals was a microcosm of the situation facing Britain in the thirties. Pacifists argued that war was not a solution to international disputes while opponents warned that pacifism itself could encourage war; the pacifist motion passed by 275 votes to 153. The Oxford Union had shown itself determined ‘not to be carried away’ again by the ‘patriotic wash which was poured out in 1914.’75 Though the importance of this motion can be questioned, the debate itself was part of an ‘unremarkable Thursday-night’s relaxation,’ the resulting ‘newspaper hysteria’ shows the public’s interest in pacifism that had been stimulated by the First World War.76 The wider impact of the public’s new-found faith in pacifism was shown during the 1933 Fulham East by-election. In this traditionally safe Conservative seat the voters willingly exchanged their former political allegiance for a Labour candidate that promoted disarmament. Such a swing would not have been possible without the social shift caused by the First World War and the ‘powerful support’ of pacifism among ‘political and intellectual notabilities’ during the inter-war years.77
In politics the Labour Party felt sufficiently assured of popular support to threaten to resort to a General Strike in 1920 and 1933 in the event of Britain becoming involved in another European war. 78 The church was equally influential. In 1934 Reverend Dick Sheppard was able to secure more than 100,000 signatures to a petition promising to ‘never under any circumstances’ join the British Army.79 Even traditionally right-wing elements of society embraced pacifism; during the First World War Max Aitken, Baron Beaverbrook, served as Minister of Information and was active in publicising and promoting the conflict.
71 J. P. M . Millar, “A Socialist in War Time,” ibid., 226. 72 Alfred Duff Cooper in a memorandum on Recruiting for the Army published 16 October 1936. CAB 24/265, 4. 73 M. Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain 1914-1945: The Defining of a Faith (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 86. 74 M. Ceadel, “The ‘King and Country’ Debate, 1933: Student Politics, Pacifism, and the Dictators,” The Historical Journal 22, no. 2 (1979), 397. 75 Ceadel, Pacifism in Britain 1914 – 1945, 131. 76 Ceadel, King and Country, 408, 422. 77 Duff Cooper, Recruiting for the Army, 16 October 1936. CAB 24/265, 4. 78 Cato, Guilty Men, 32. 79 Duff Cooper, Recruiting for the Army, 16 October 1936. CAB 24/265, 3. 13
By 1935 the Beaverbrook press were ‘flatly declaring [Britain’s] entrance into the war to have been a tragic error.’80 That so great a shift can be seen even in the Beaverbrook press is a testament to the growth of the power of pacifism in inter-war Britain. The Covenant of the League of Nations and the mood of the public encouraged the Government to allow the British armed forces to fall ‘below the lowest point consistent with national safety.’81 Support for pacifism was deemed a ‘very powerful factor’ in the decline of the British Army.82 The ‘persistent and almost unopposed [pacifist] propaganda’ of the inter-war years caused the ‘moral disarmament’ of the British people.83 It had become axiomatic that ‘great armaments lead inevitably to war,’ so the British public began to ‘assume,’ despite ‘innumerable setbacks,’ that the League of Nations was the only requirement for the ‘maintenance of peace.’ 84 Military force, ‘the older method of defence,’ could be ‘gradually dispensed with.’85 Stanley Baldwin believed that the public were so opposed to military spending or any rearmament programme before 1936 that he would have faced a ‘landslide’ defeat if he fought an election on this issue.86 This was not an exaggeration; to spend lavishly on the armed forces in the years to 1936, a time of popular faith in the League of Nations and widespread poverty, was to oppose the wishes of the people and, as had been shown in Fulham East, invite electoral defeat.
The League of Nations and Public Opinion
Despite its tainted reputation, the League of Nations did successfully resolve numerous international crises that threatened to escalate into another global conflict in the inter-war years. For example, in the early twenties the League was instrumental in the successful resolution of the territorial disputes in Upper Silesia in 1921 and, it can be argued, Memel in 1923. The League also secured an end to the Greco-Bulgarian War in 1925. While the 1932- 1934 World Disarmament Conference ultimately failed, without the structure provided by the
80 Sir Norman Angell, “War and Peace, 1914,” in ed. J. Bell, We did not Fight, 48. 81 Report of the Committee of Imperial Defence’s Defence Requirements Sub-Committee, 5 March 1934. CAB 24/247, 34. 82 Duff Cooper in a memorandum on Recruiting for the Army circulated 2 April 1936. CAB 24/261, 3. 83 Italicised in original. Report of the Defence Requirements Sub-Committee, 5 March 1934. CAB 24/247, 34. 84 Lord Grey of Fallodon, Twenty-Five Years: Volume I (New York: Stokes, 1925), 91; James Ramsay MacDonald, Statement Relating to Defence published 14 February 1935. CAB 24/253, 5. 85 Ramsay MacDonald in a Statement Relating to Defence published 14 February 1935. CAB 24/253, 5. 86 In his autobiography, Robert Vansittart reports a conversation he had with Baldwin before the 1933 election. Vansittart claims to have told Baldwin that he had a ‘caisse de jeu to make any gambler’s mouth water. [Baldwin] could lose a packet [over rearmament] and still have a majority of 250 [in the House of Commons.]’ Baldwin then ‘rightly reminded [Vansittart] that [Baldwin] knew much more about this sort of thing.’ While Vansittart expected that rearmament would cause the government to lose ‘fifty seats, 100 on a division, [Baldwin] feared a landslide.’ Lord Vansittart, The Mist Procession (London: Hutchinson, 1958), 444. 14
League such a bold initiative would have had no hope of success. Together these efforts, and the general mood of pacifism in Britain, increased the popularity of the League among the public. The 1935 Peace Ballot, a ‘fair sample of the opinion of the whole [British] electorate’ demonstrated the extent of the public’s support for the League.87 The scope of the project is especially impressive when placed in context. In the November 1935 British general election 21,997,054 voted.88 Over eleven million voted during the Peace Ballot; there had never been ‘any expression of public opinion in any country comparable in magnitude.’89 The result was a ‘great declaration of faith’ in the League despite its recent failure regarding Manchuria.90 Nearly ninety-eight percent of participants voted in favour of Britain remaining a member of the League of Nations.91 Around ninety-two percent of those surveyed were in favour of an ‘all-round reduction of armaments by agreement.’92 The results of the Peace Ballot are, of course, open to various interpretations. It can be shown that the majority of the British public were in favour of the use of military sanctions to resolve international disputes. This issue was, however, far more divisive than the others. While the other questions on the Ballot attracted majorities of at least eighty percent, with an abstention rate below ten percent, for the final question, whether or not Britain should ‘if necessary’ resort to military sanctions to resolve international disputes, the majority was under sixty percent and the abstention rate over twenty percent.93 Herbert Samuel claimed that the Peace Ballot proved that if Britain was in the future forced ‘because of the perversity of others’ into military sanctions there would be ‘throughout the country a feeling of the gravest disappointment.’94 The League of Nations was clearly supported by the vast majority of the British public in the mid-thirties and this influenced the foreign policy of the British Government.
Laurence Collier, a staunch opponent of appeasement, admitted in February 1936 that in Britain ‘nothing effective’ could be done ‘without the support of public opinion.’95 During a period of economic and social distress the Rhineland was not the principal concern of the vast majority of the British public. Harold Nicolson summarised the opinion of the average Briton thusly; though Germany ‘may possibly have committed an act of hostility’ she had not
87 Robert Cecil, “Peace Ballot: The Final Figures,” The Times, June 28, 1935. 88 F. W. S. Craig, British Electoral Facts 1832-1980 (Surrey: Parliamentary Research Services, 1981), 32. 89 Herbert Samuel, “Peace in Europe: The Peace Ballot,” The Times, June 1, 1935. 90 Archbishop of Canterbury, “Peace Ballot: The Final Figures,” The Times, June 28, 1935. 91 “Peace Ballot: The Final Figures,” The Times, June 28, 1935. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Samuel, “Peace in Europe: The Peace Ballot,” The Times, June 1, 1935. 95 Laurence Collier, Foreign Office official, recording a conversation with Ivan Maisky, Soviet Ambassador to Britain, held 13 February 1936. DBFP Second Series Vol. XV, 656. 15
thus ‘committed an act of war.’96 There was, during the early- and mid-thirties, support for the Nazis among the ‘relatively small minority’ of the British public interested in German affairs.97 This support increased after the events of 7 March 1936. The British press during the crisis became ‘overwhelmingly pro-German’ and extremely ‘anti-French.’98 The Daily Mail assured its readers that the events of 7 March 1936 had ‘caused no crisis’ and had made ‘no substantial change in conditions’ in Europe.99 It was hoped that crisis would result in a ‘new era in Europe based on an acceptance of Hitler’s [peace] offer.’100 The News Chronicle believed that the ‘symbolic occupation’ of the Rhineland was ‘not regarded by a single Englishman as constituting sufficient ground for supporting French punitive measures against Germany.’101 The Morning Post warned that there was ‘no alternative to discussion but to thrust the German troops from the Rhineland by war.’102 The Daily Express roared that the British public would say ‘No!’ to involvement in another war in Europe while the Daily Herald agreed that the British public ‘would not stand for war’ with Germany in March 1936. 103 The crisis simply did not convince the public of the need for war and without popular support the British Government was unwilling, if not unable, to pursue a firm foreign policy during the Rhineland Crisis.
Eden independently made a similar assessment of the public’s mood. He firmly believed that the British public ‘was not prepared to go to war’ to resolve the Rhineland Crisis.104 Eden admitted that the opinion of the public was ‘even less sympathetic to the French case’ for action than he expected, having become infuriated with the French methods of ‘continual coercion and everlasting complaining’ during the inter-war years. 105 A firm response to the crisis was deemed unnecessary by the public: ‘German troops [had simply
96 H. Nicolson, “Germany and the Rhineland,” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931-1939) 15, no. 6 (1936): 4. 97 I. Kershaw, Making Friends with Hitler: Lord Londonderry and Britain’s Road to War (London: Penguin, 2004), 26; Emmerson also notes that the British public remained passive because of ‘respect for Hitler’s achievements.’ Emmerson, Rhineland Crisis, 80; Even after the German reintroduction of conscription in March 1935 Wing-Commander James claimed during a House of Commons debate on the 1935 Air Estimates that there existed ‘a background of sympathy and good will towards Germany’ among the British public which ‘not even the crass blunders of the German Government for a period of years have been able to dispel.’ 299 HC Debs 5s Col. 1083. 98 Nigel Law, former First Secretary in the Foreign Office, in a letter to Sargent received 9 March 1936. DBFP Second Series Vol. XVI, 72. 99 “Germany and Locarno: British Press Views,” The Times, March 10, 1936. 100 Law to Sargent. DBFP Second Series Vol. XVI, 72. 101 “Germany and Locarno: British Press Views,” The Times, March 10, 1936. 102 Ibid. 103 Ibid. 104 Eden to Clerk, received 14 March 1936. DBFP Second Series Vol. XVI, 119. 105 Eden in a note on Law’s letter to Sargent. Ibid., 72; Leopold von Hoesch, German Ambassador to Britain, in a telegram to the German Foreign Ministry 21 March 1936. DGFP Series C, Vol. V, 237. 16
garrisoned] German towns.’106 This was the general view of the Government, press and the minority among the British public interested in German affairs in March 1936. As George Orwell found during his social survey ‘Hitler, Locarno, Fascism and the threat of war aroused hardly a flicker of interest’ among the majority of the British public in March 1936.107 The country, on the whole, was calm during the crisis. Together the British public’s generally apathetic view of European affairs, interest in pacifism and faith in the League of Nations combined with the changed economic situation of the inter-war period to create opposition to both sufficient defence expenditure to allow a firm response to the Rhineland Crisis or support for the introduction of military sanctions against Germany. Money spent on arms or war could not be spent on the wellbeing of the British public. That the Government could afford to spend on arms at all during a period of mass unemployment and poverty angered many. It was ‘not easy’ for observers to reconcile the British Government’s spending an average of £113,300,000 annually on her military between 1929 and 1935 while her citizens lived ‘in slums’ and many were ‘undernourished.’108 The Government’s decision to spend on defence while ‘twelve million souls out of forty million’ in Britain lived ‘far below the poverty line’ was resented.109 To limit spending on arms was to follow the will of the vast majority of the British electorate. Such a policy would, however, leave the British Government unable to respond militarily to the Rhineland Crisis. To increase spending on armaments, before the numerous crises of the thirties underlined the need for rearmament, was to risk opposing the wishes of the pacifists and intensify the anger of the already aggrieved, and increasing, impoverished in Britain.
Poverty
As a reward for their sacrifice during the First World War David Lloyd George promised to make Britain ‘a fit country for heroes to live in.’110 Slums, overcrowding and poverty would be combated by extensive house-building programmes and the extension of the unemployment insurance scheme. Slums and poverty were ‘not fit [for] the men who had won [the] war.’111 Great efforts were made to ‘find a better society by returning to the pre-
106 “Germany and Locarno: British Press Views,” The Times, March 10, 1936. 107 G. Orwell, The Road to Wigan Pier (London: Penguin, 1989), 82. 108 P. Noel-Baker, The Private Manufacture of Armaments: Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz, 1936), 55. 109 A. Bullock, The Life and Times of Ernest Bevin Volume I: Trade Union Leader 1881 – 1940 (London: Heinemann, 1969), 539. 110 “The Election: Prime Minister on the Issues,” The Times, November 25, 1918. 111 Ibid. 17
war order purged of its grosser inequalities.’ 112 This programme would, however, prove impossible for the Lloyd George coalition. Due to a severe decline in house-building during the war years there was a great surplus of demand over supply. The 1921 Census showed there were 750,000 dwellings in Britain that housed two or more families.113 Over-crowding was exacerbated by the ‘practical cessation’ of repairs and maintenance to the existing housing stock during the First World War.114 The Ministry of Reconstruction estimated in March 1918 that Britain required an additional 500,000 dwellings to meet the demand.115 When Britain’s demobilised troops returned the problem became ‘acute.’116 Lloyd George’s pledge was deemed a ‘most dangerous phrase to use’ because the British public believed that the Government could ‘make [Britain] a fit place for heroes to live in within twelve months.’117 The task of improving Britain’s social conditions simply could not be achieved in a single year. Fewer than 200,000 homes were built between 1918 and 1923, leaving a deficit of over 500,000 on the requirement of 1923 and 300,000 on even the 1918 requirement.118 It was admitted in 1921 that the concept of a land fit for heroes was ‘unsound’ and, in light of the growing unemployment problem, ‘terribly expensive.’ 119 The British heroes returned from the horrors of the trenches to over-crowded and dilapidated houses. The failure of the Coalition to provide such a basic need as adequate shelter caused bitterness and anger among the public over any expenditure, such as that on the armed forces, that was deemed unnecessary.
Britain had found ‘£6,000,000, £7,000,000, £8,000,000 a day for the War for several years’ and ‘should have gone on doing it for a long time’ if the war had not ended in 1918, yet the Lloyd George coalition did not spend the sums required to house Britain’s heroes.120 The broken promises of the British leaders in the inter-war years created resentment among
112 Mowat, Between the Wars, 1. 113 A. M. Carr-Saunders and D. Caradog Jones, A Survey of the Social Structure of England and Wales as illustrated by Statistics (Oxford: University Press, 1927), 17. 114 Memorandum produced by the Ministry of Reconstruction on the need for a large-scale programme of house building in Britain after the First World War. 11 March 1918. CAB 24/44, 2. 115 Ibid. 116 Ibid. 117 Lord Wittenham during a debate in the British House of Lords on the financial position of the country held 23 October 1919. 37 HL Debs Col. 24. 118 “Housing and the Election,” The Times, October 23, 1924, warned not only of a deficiency of 500,000 houses but also ‘a deficiency of skilled building labour so great that... there is hardly enough to provide housing for the annual increase in population, without making any impression on accumulated arrears;’ Neville Chamberlain during a debate on housing schemes in the British House of Commons held 17 April 1923. 162 HC Debs 5s Col. 1900. 119 Robert Cecil during a House of Commons debate on the Finance Bill (1921) on 25 May 1921. 142 HC Debs 5s Col 173. 120 Horatio Bottomley during a House of Commons debate on the Housing and Town Planning Bill (1920) held 8 April 1919. 114 HC Debs 5s Col. 1933. 18
the general public towards expenditure on the armed forces which was deemed ‘beyond the country’s means.’121 Lloyd George’s promise was ‘the wickedest lie that has ever been told’ yet this failure was not entirely the fault of the Government. 122 For the first time unemployment became a national issue as it grew from an annual pre-war rate of 4.5% to an average of 10.6% in the interwar years and a peak of 22.9% in 1932. 123 This growth coincided with increased public sympathy for the underprivileged and the rise to prominence of the Labour Party. The emergence of this working-class party forced Britain’s politicians to cater to the needs of the lower classes by offering policies, such as improvements to the unemployment insurance scheme, to attract their votes. The maintenance of Britain’s unfortunate minority, therefore, became a serious drain on the Treasury necessitating drastic economies in non-essential spending in the years to the Rhineland Crisis.
To quote figures relating to the growth of unemployment among the insured population during the twenties and thirties risks ignoring the wider social implications of such an increase. During his social survey Orwell learnt that ‘to get at the real number of people living on (not drawing) the dole, you have got to multiply the official figures by something over three.’124 This would give a figure of over eight million living on benefits in 1932.125 In 1936 Orwell took this enhanced figure to be something close to six million and then added to this the ‘great number of people who are in work but who, from a financial point of view, might equally well be unemployed because they are not drawing anything that can be described as a living wage,’ their dependents, and those on old-age pensions and disability allowances to estimate that ‘well over ten million,’ around a quarter of the population, were living in poverty.126 John Burnett highlighted that the ‘insured population’ only included twelve million of the near twenty million people in Britain within the insurance age limits and ‘statistics based on the insured working population…considerably under- represent the total number of unemployed people.’ 127 Millions more could, possibly, be
121 Robert Horne during a Cabinet meeting to discuss the Geddes Committee on 24 February 1922. CAB 23/29, 14. 122 Austin Hopkinson during a House of Commons debate on unemployment on 16 February 1921. 138 HC Debs 5s Col. 227. 123 R. C. O. Matthews and others, British Economic Growth (Stanford: University Press, 1982), 81; A. C. Pigou, The Political Economy of War (London: Macmillan, 1940), 31; J. Stevenson, British Society 1914-1945 (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984), 270. 124 Italicised in original. Orwell, Wigan Pier, 69. 125 Mitchell quotes the total number of unemployed in 1932 as 2,744,800. B. R. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 127. 126 Orwell, Wigan Pier, 69-70; Orwell has perhaps over-estimated the number of unemployed. Mitchell has the unemployment figure in Britain in 1936 as 1,755,000. Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 127. 127 J. Burnett Idle Hands: The Experience of Unemployment 1790-1990 (London: Routledge, 1994), 205. 19
added to the total living in poverty from those unemployed in the uninsured trades. To support such a large proportion of the population was obviously a serious burden for the Government. The general public believed that through lower military spending vast savings could be made and were ‘anxious to avoid heavy expenditure on armaments’ while so many struggled on unemployment benefit.128 When Britain’s financial difficulties were accentuated by the Great Depression, nearly 280,000 Britons had their assistance reduced or rescinded between November 1931 and January 1932, hostility to defence expenditure naturally increased.129
While the unemployment problem in Britain during the twenties was serious, the Great Depression saw a huge growth in the number of long-term unemployed – from 53,000 in 1929 to 480,000 in 1933 – that threatened to create an unemployed class.130 The inter-war years, as well as being the first real period of mass unemployment in Britain, also saw the growth of investigations into the condition of the impoverished. The effects of inadequate nutrition, poor housing and poverty on the health and vitality of the nation were, for the first time, assessed scientifically.131 It was proven that the standards of benefit were, generally, inadequate to meet even the minimum dietary requirements of the time. The amounts provided were, however, sufficient to prevent Britain’s poor falling into absolute destitution and starvation, but this affected other aspects of Government spending. The British Cabinet were ‘convinced’ of the need to cut military expenditure ‘to the utmost extent compatible with the fulfilment of [Britain’s] obligations and national safety’ to provide for the basic needs of the unemployed and to prevent unrest.132 Simply it was ‘politically convenient’ to divert defence expenditure to the unemployed.133 To rearm would be to incite the level of unrest that threatened the Government during the 1919 demobilisation riots, the 1931 Budget
128 Note by the Treasury on the Annual Review for 1932 by the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee. 17 March 1932. CAB 24/229, 4; Annual Review of Imperial Defence Policy for 1932 produced by the Chiefs of Staff Sub- Committee. 17 March 1932. CAB 24/229, 12; The Committee on National Expenditure believed that ‘criticism of expenditure in other directions has been less readily forthcoming in the past owing to the belief that if only the Government of the day would tackle the expenditure in the Navy, Army and Air Force, large countervailing economies would be obtained.’ Report of the Committee on National Expenditure published 27 July 1931. CAB 24/222, 67. 129 W. Hannington, Unemployed Struggles 1919-1936: My Life and Struggles amongst the Unemployed (Wakefield: EP, 1973), 230. 130 Pilgrim Trust, Men Without Work (Cambridge: University Press, 1938), 7. 131 See J. Boyd-Orr, Food, Health and Income (London: Macmillan, 1936), G. C. M. M’Gonigle and J. Kirby, Poverty and Public Health (London: Victor Gollancz, 1936), B. Seebohm-Rowntree Poverty and Progress (London: Longmans, 1941) or A. M. Carr and D. Caradog Jones, A Survey of the Social Structure of England and Wales as Illustrated by Statistics (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1937). 132 Draft Resolution on Economy approved by the Cabinet on 8 December 1920. CAB 23/23, 5. 133 Committee of Imperial Defence report on the possibility of a European aerial convention. 21 February 1935. CAB 24/253, 28. 20
crisis and the 1934 Unemployment Assistance Board (UAB) crisis. Such social unrest and economic strife contrasted sharply with the prosperous British economy of the pre-war years. Britain had been an extremely important producer and the financial centre of the world. Why then were the twenties and the thirties a period of mass unemployment, poverty and misery for a sizeable minority of the population?
The First World War and National Debt
The highest annual expenditure by Britain in any previous war was £71,000,000; in the first full year of the Great War expenditure exceeded £450,000,000 while Britain’s total revenue between 1913 and 1915 was under £425,000,000. 134 As the war intensified Britain’s expenditure soared from £950,000 per day in November 1914 to over £7,000,000 per day in May 1917.135 Expenditure on the armed forces alone grew from £77,000,000 in 1913 to over £1,415,000,000 in 1918. 136 These huge sums could not be provided for out of ordinary revenue; while Britain generated £5,695,944,000 in the war years through increases in taxation and the introduction of new taxes, her total expenditure during the conflict exceeded £12,000,000,000. 137 Between 1906 and 1914 the Liberal Government had reduced the National Debt by over £104,000,000 to £650,000,000. 138 In September 1919 Britain’s National Debt exceeded £7,700,000,000. 139 Due to the costs of maintaining an army of occupation and huge interest charges Britain’s debt scarcely diminished in the next five years, remaining at £7,680,000,000 in March 1924.140 Domestic borrowing raised Britain around £5,500,000,000 while over £1,300,000,000 was obtained from abroad.141 Repaying this debt imposed ‘a serious strain on [Britain] for a generation.’ 142 To meet these commitments Britain strove in the early inter-war years to regain her lost export markets. Owing to the growth of foreign competitors, and the return to the Gold Standard, Britain’s exporters were unable to recover their lost trade, with dire consequences for the Treasury. Without the
134 J. Stamp, Taxation during the War (London: Oxford University Press, 1932), 23; B. Mallet and C. O. George, British Budgets Second Series: 1913-14 to 1920-21 (London: Macmillan, 1929), 390. 135 Stamp, Taxation during the War, 23; F. W. Hirst and J. E. Allen, British War Budgets (London: Oxford University Press, 1926), 167. 136 Mallet and George, British Budgets 1913-14 to 1920-21, 392-393; Noel-Baker, Armaments I, 399. 137 Mallet and George, British Budgets 1913-1914 to 1920-21, 390-391. 138 Mallet and George, British Budgets 1913-1914 to 1920-21, 28, 94. 139 Figures quoted from The Economist, 4 October 1919 in H. F. Grady, British War Finance 1914-1919 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1927), 123. 140 From a report issued 3 March 1924 by a Treasury Committee examining Britain’s financial position. T160/194. 141 Stanley Baldwin during a debate on Great War finance held 9 March 1923. 161 HC Debs 5s Col 911. 142 Herbert Asquith quoted in Hirst and Allen, British War Budgets, 123-124. 21
demand caused by the war effort Britain’s traditional industries struggled to compete in the changed post-war economy, resulting in an unemployment problem that remained a national issue for nearly two decades.
To meet the exceptional need of the First World War Britain’s industrial capacity was vastly increased. In shipbuilding, due to increased demand for replacement tonnage, Britain had expanded her capacity by twenty-five percent.143 In the five years before the First World War the British Government had invested £10,000,000 annually enhancing her iron and steel productive capacity.144 During the First World War, and the short-lived post-war boom, the capacity of Britain’s blast furnaces was further increased from 11,000,000 tons to 12,000,000 tons while her steel works increased from 8,000,000 tons to around 12,000,000. 145 Coal mining was expanded by about ten percent.146 In the twenties, without the stimulus of war, such increases caused serious problems. These expansions of Britain’s industrial capacity were accompanied by increases in employment. Without the artificial demand of the First World War, and with numerous important foreign markets lost to foreign competitors due to Britain’s wartime industrial diversion, Britain’s staple industries declined. This loss of trade was accentuated by Britain’s return to the Gold Standard at an over-valued rate in 1925, a move which substantially increased the cost of her exports, creating a serious unemployment problem. In ‘an orgy of economic nationalism’ competitor nations protected their own fledgling industries through prohibitively high tariffs, selling their goods expensively in the protected domestic market to finance further industrial development while exporting goods below cost for additional profits, significantly reducing the demand for Britain’s products.147 Unable to compete with these subsidised foreign products Britain’s market share declined, further increasing unemployment and the financial difficulties of the Treasury in the inter-war years.
The First World War allowed America to demonstrate an ‘industrial strength never before realized’ and this, together with her credit resources swelled by loan repayments from the British, ‘placed her in a unique position’ at the end of the war.148 America’s share of
143 Godfrey Collins during a debate on the Finance Act 1915 held 12 July 1920. 131 HC Debs 5s Col. 2044. 144 Andrew Duncan during a debate on the Iron and Steel Bill 1948 on 17 November 1948. 458 HC Debs 5s Col 375. 145 Mowat, Between the Wars, 278; Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister during a debate on the iron and steel industry, 8 December 1925. 189 HC Debs 5s Col. 228. 146 J. H. Jones, “Organised Marketing in the Coal Industry,” The Economic Journal 39, no. 154 (1929): 158. 147 T. H. Burnham and G. O. Hoskins, Iron and Steel in Britain 1870-1930 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1943), 51. 148 Grady, British War Finance, 304. 22
world exports increased from 12.9% in 1913 to 15.7% in 1928 while her share of manufactured exports grew from 13.8% to 21.5% in the same period.149 As well as these American gains competition also emerged from Japan, while increased domestic production in China, Russia and India, encouraged by prohibitive tariffs, further diminished Britain’s potential export markets. These, combined with her huge debt repayments, gave ‘no small concern’ to the British Government who sought a return to the pre-war economic status quo.150 In each of her expanded staple industries Britain experienced a decline in exports during the inter-war years. Britain’s share of world exports declined from 15% in 1900 to 10.8% in 1928 while her proportion of manufactured exports shrank from 35.5% to 23.6% in the same period.151 In shipping Britain produced less than forty percent of the world’s new tonnage having constructed over eighty percent at the turn of the century.152 In the six years preceding the First World War Britain had exported on average 4,500,000 tons of steel annually but in the six years after the First World War this figure declined by almost twenty- five percent.153 Britain’s total coal production declined from 287,400,000 tons in 1913 to 257,900,000 tons in 1929. 154 In textiles Britain’s share of the Indian market, the most important outlet for her ‘major export trade,’155 declined from ninety-seven percent to fifty percent between 1914 and 1932. 156 The principal reason for this decline was Britain’s relatively expensive products. As well as suffering the negative effect of an over-valued currency, Britain’s industrialists had invested their war-time profits in expanding, rather than modernising, their plant and were therefore unable to produce goods as economically or efficiently as their foreign competitors. As a result unemployment became a national issue. Decreased national income from industry at a time of increased national expenditure on unemployment obviously caused a serious problem for the Treasury and necessitated cuts in non-essential spending. When the Great Depression accentuated these difficulties the need for Government economy became even greater. The restriction of unnecessary spending, and not the expensive restoration of the armed forces, was therefore the essential economic policy of the British Government in the years to 1936.
149 A. Booth, The British Economy in the Twentieth Century (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 4. 150 Grady, British War Finance, 306-307. 151 Booth, British Economy, 4. 152 Luke Thompson during a debate on Government policy held 13 February 1924. 169 HC Debs 5s Col. 924. 153 William Brass during a debate on unemployment 26 November 1925. 188 HC Debs 5s Col. 1718-1719. 154 Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 248-249. 155 B. Ellinger, “British Foreign Policy in Relation to the Lancashire Cotton Industry,” Royal Institute of International Affairs 1931-1939 16, no. 2 (1937): 245. 156 W. Lazonick, “The Cotton Industry,” in The Decline of the British Economy, eds B. Elbaum and W. Lazonick, 42 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986). 23
Unemployment and Expenditure
The response of the Government to the post-war economic situation was to impose substantial economies on spending. In 1922 the Committee on National Expenditure recommended spending cuts of £87,000,000. 157 Such reductions were essential. The Unemployment Insurance scheme, vastly extended in the immediate post-war years to calm social unrest, had insufficient reserves for unemployment on the scale of 1921 and, as unemployment remained an issue throughout the inter-war years, the Unemployment Fund became an almost constant burden to the Treasury. Between 1920 and 1931 the British Unemployment Fund showed an excess of income over expenditure in only two years and, by the end of the March 1931, owed the Treasury over £75,000,000.158 Cuts in Government spending, both on the unemployed and in other areas, were essential to prevent national insolvency. Among the most severe cuts was expenditure on the military. Between 1921 and 1923 funding for the services declined from £292,200,000 to £111,000,000. 159 The justification for this action was ‘the urge of remorseless financial necessity’ despite the recognition of potential ‘danger points in Europe and the Near East.’ 160 If these threats matured simultaneously Britain’s security would not be assured. The danger posed by the decline of the British armed forces was, therefore, recognised and expressed as early as 1923. Economic necessity and social issues during the twenties prevented the British Government from rearming to guard against these hypothetical threats. When during the early- and mid- thirties these threats became real the response of the British Government was again restricted by social and economic factors which limited military spending during an increasingly dangerous period.
During the early thirties the Great Depression necessitated further cuts in spending to combat the unprecedented level of unemployment. The British Government openly admitted that the levels of unemployment experienced during the Depression ‘were not even thought of when the scheme of unemployment insurance was first formulated.’161 To maintain any level of welfare payments non-essential spending, such as that on national defences in the age
157 Second Interim Report of the Committee on National Expenditure, 24 February 1922. CAB 23/29, 12. 158 International Labour Conference, Unemployment Insurance and Various forms of Relief for the Unemployed (Geneva: International Labour Office, 1933), 197. 159 Mitchell, British Historical Statistics, 591. 160 Lieutenant-Colonel Guinness, during a debate on the 1923-1924 Army Estimates held 15 March 1923. 161 HC Debs 5s Col. 1830. 161 British White Paper on Unemployment 1930. PRO 30/69/464. 24
of popular pacifism and collective security, had to be reduced. In 1931 the British Government was faced with financial catastrophe. She was ‘suffering from unbalanced finances and from lack of confidence;’ her economy ‘cracked under the strain’ of unemployment and the Great Depression. 162 The budget predicted a deficit of £170,000,000. 163 Short-term solutions, such as increasing the borrowing power of the Unemployment Fund, proved ineffectual. Drastic action was required. Britain became the first major economy to abandon the Gold Standard, yet this was insufficient to ease the crisis. The May Committee recommended severe cuts in public spending, primarily in payments to the unemployed, which resulted in the resignation of the Labour Government and the creation of a National Government which eventually forced through the proposals. The Unemployment Act (1920) had been a ‘product of fear of the unemployed’ following rioting and serious unrest in Britain in 1919.164 To reduce assistance to the impoverished at a time of mass unemployment was a real political risk. It was feared that the result of the Government’s economies in 1931 would be ‘demonstrations by the unemployed’ across the country.165 Clashes with the police ‘would be frequent’ and there was a risk of ‘rioting with loss of life.’166 The Trade Unions were certain that ‘any measures of retrenchment in respect of Unemployment Insurance would be strongly opposed.’167 Widespread unrest relating to benefits had precedents: as well as the events of 1919 the British Government had faced a ‘week of agitation’ in October 1921 when the unemployed pressed for an allowance to be paid to dependents.168 The situation was especially dangerous because the goals of left-wing political agitators, especially the National Unemployed Workers Movement, ‘coincided with the popular mood’ in the early thirties.169 Britain’s leaders realised that, despite the risk of unrest, benefit cuts were ‘absolutely necessary to keep unemployment pay going at all’ and stabilise the British economy.170 Unemployment had become a ‘grave danger to the economic
162 A Statement issued by His Majesty’s Government on Certain Proposals submitted to them by Mr. Lloyd George published 11 July 1935. CAB 24/255, 8. 163 Philip Snowden during a House of Commons debate on finance. 256 HC Debs 5s Col. 310. 164 R. Flanagan, “Parish-Fed Bastards” – A History of the Politics of the Unemployed in Britain, 1884-1939 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1991), 133. 165 Samuel, The Present Situation, 24 September 1931. CAB 24/223, 5. 166 Ibid. 167 Walter Citrine quoted during a Cabinet discussion on the recommendations of the May Committee held 21 August 1931. CAB 23/67, 3. 168 The Government would eventually concede and grant assistance to dependents. Flanagan, Bastards, 146. 169 Ibid., 176. 170 Ramsay MacDonald quoted in “Mr MacDonald: Letter to Seaham Labour Party,” The Times, August 31, 1931. 25
and financial stability’ of the country and so the Government had little choice but to make cuts and risk an unprecedented backlash.171
Despite its severity the 1931 benefit cuts were eventually accepted by the public because they could be shown to be absolutely necessary and due to a substantial reduction in the cost of living in Britain during the thirties.172 Even with these cuts unemployment benefit remained a great drain on Britain’s finances. The restoration of international confidence in the British economy and the maintenance of the unemployed, not the needs of the armed forces, became ‘the most essential tasks’ of the Government in the early thirties.173 It was admitted in 1934 that the international situation had deteriorated and the only way to ensure Britain’s security was to ‘make some readjustment’ in unemployment insurance to allow greater military spending. 174 Britain’s future defence policy was dependent on the Government being able to persuade the public, with their increasing faith in pacifism, sympathy for the impoverished and likely first-hand experience of benefits, to accept lower payments to provide the funds necessary for rearmament. When the Government sought to amend the scale of unemployment benefit in 1934 to re-establish the unemployment insurance scheme as a ‘solvent and self-supporting’ operation through the introduction of the UAB, without any corresponding increase in military expenditure, it encountered widespread opposition.175 The public’s response to new benefit rates, deemed by the Government to be ‘appropriate’ for the unemployed, forced the British Government into an embarrassing reversal. 176 If these cuts had been accompanied by the substantial increases in military spending recommended by the Defence Requirements Committee the scale of unrest would have increased exponentially. During the UAB crisis, when the need for rearmament was becoming critical, the majority of the public still favoured disarmament and maintained its faith in collective security. To combine the dissatisfaction of those who suffered benefit cuts with those who favoured disarmament would unite two dangerous factions and create a serious situation for the National Government.
171 Snowden, The Financial Situation, 7 January 1931. CAB 24/219, 11. 172 Snowden informed the Cabinet during a debate on unemployment insurance that ‘the value of Unemployment benefit [in 1931] was over 30% higher than the 1924 value.’ During a period of an ‘enormous deficit’ such lavish expenditure had to be decreased. Snowden during the 20 August 1931 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/67, 7. 173 A Statement issued by His Majesty’s Government on Certain Proposals submitted to them by Mr. Lloyd George, 11 July 1935. CAB 24/255, 38. 174 Report of the Defence Requirements Committee, 5 March 1934. CAB 24/247, 34. 175 Henry Betterton, Date of the First Appointed Day of the UAB, 25 June 1934. CAB 24/249, 2; Note by Betterton following the ratification of the Draft Convention regarding benefit or allowances to the involuntarily unemployed circulated 3 October 1935. CAB 24/257, 13. 176 Betterton, Date of the First Appointed Day, 25 June 1934. CAB 24/249, 2. 26
On 7 January 1935 750,000 unemployed were assessed for the first time according to the regulations of the UAB. It was estimated that ‘over half the total [unemployment benefit] cases in Great Britain and two-thirds of the total cases in Scotland’ suffered a reduction.177 These cuts were ‘brutal’ and had ‘no justification...from an economic point of view.’178 The reduction in the relief given to recipients in the depressed areas, those most in need of assistance, was damned as causing ‘starvation.’ 179 The British public, normally ‘hard to move,’ felt that ‘a tremendous injustice had been done to people who were already down in the depths.’ 180 The new regulations created ‘intolerable conditions’ for Britain’s unemployed.181 Without a reversal the Government, it was feared, would be faced ‘with a situation among the unemployed more dangerous than any that had existed since the end of the Great War.’ 182 By 6 February 1935 the National Government realised a ‘difficult situation’ had developed which made a ‘standstill’ on benefit rates ‘unavoidable.’183 On 7 February Oliver Stanley admitted the Government’s response could be regarded as ‘a failure by the [UAB] and as surrender.’ 184 Immediate arrangements were made to amend the regulations of the UAB. A standstill agreement was introduced at a cost of over £107,000,000 which prevented any individual cut in unemployment benefit.185 The public had ‘found what pressure could do, and they would use it again’ to oppose unpopular Government policies.186 Given the public’s reaction to a cut in benefit without an increase in military spending, and their general attitude to rearmament in this period, to divert sums from the unemployed to the forces was politically unthinkable. If the issues that had caused the shock results of the Fulham East and Wavertree by-elections were combined, the swing against the Government
177 Memorandum by Godfrey Collins on the Report of the Committee on the Regulations of the Unemployment Assistance Board. 23 June 1936. CAB 24/263, 2. 178 Robert Boothby, “Unemployment Relief: Effects of New System,” The Times, January 29, 1935. 179 Cries of ‘this is starvation’ were audible during the House of Commons debate on the new regulations of the UAB quoted from “Parliament: Unemployment Relief,” The Times, January 29, 1935. 180 James Maxton, “House of Commons: Working-Class Discontent,” The Times, January 30, 1935. 181 Statement from the National Council of Labour following the announcement of the standstill agreement, “Unemployment Relief: Adjustment of Payments,” The Times, February 7, 1935. 182 “Parliament: Unemployment Relief,” The Times, January 29, 1935. 183 Neville Chamberlain and Oliver Stanley describing the situation created by the introduction of the Unemployment Assistance Board. The public reaction was so fierce that neither Chamberlain nor Stanley had time to ‘consult the Cabinet or the Cabinet Committee’ before announcing the standstill. 6 February 1935. CAB 23/81, 10. 184 Stanley, “Relief Rules Suspended,” The Times, February 6, 1935; Stanley, “Unemployment Relief: Adjustment of Payments,” The Times, February 7, 1935. 185 Figure provided by Ministry of Labour during a House of Commons debate on unemployment expenditure held 16 May 1935. 301 HC Debs 5s Col 1859. 186 Stafford Cripps, “Relief Rules: New Bill in the Commons,” The Times, February 13 1935; In the February 1935 Wavertree by-election a Labour candidate, Joseph Cleary, overturned a Conservative majority of nearly 24,000. Cleary claimed that his victory had been due to ‘the tremendous volume of protest throughout the country by the Unemployment Assistance Board regulations.’ “Labour win at Wavertree,” The Times, February 7, 1935. 27
would be huge. Despite this difficult situation the British economy had in 1933 begun its recovery from the Great Depression based on a housing boom and increased consumer spending. As well as inciting the pacifists and unemployed into unrest increased military spending in the early thirties could, according to the financial orthodoxy of the time, unsettle the key components of Britain’s recovery from the Great Depression.
Economic Recovery
One of the principal causes of the Great Depression, the decline in price of primary products such as food and raw materials, was of great importance to Britain’s recovery. Prices of agricultural products fell by thirty percent between 1925 and July 1929 with further falls of forty, twenty-eight and twelve percent in 1930, 1931 and 1932 respectively.187 As British wages were relatively inelastic, those who remained in employment were left with more disposable income. The decline in the average family size, from 4.36 in 1911 to 3.72 in 1931, meant further reductions in household expenditure and constituted an additional saving for those in employment in Britain.188 This increase in disposable income, combined with the introduction of the National Grid, meant a growth in demand for new, often electrical, consumer products. Expenditure on furniture, electrical and other durable products increased by eleven percent between 1929 and 1933 while the cost of living decreased by seventeen percent.189 The building trade, assisted by low levels of building in the twenties and high demand, low material costs and low interest rates, experienced a boom. Together with the new industries, the housing boom ‘formed a base wide enough to initiate and carry recovery.’190 Domestic consumer spending, incredibly, allowed for ‘the near-maintenance of previous growth rates even in the face of a severe depression.’191 While the new industries did not solve the long-standing problem of unemployment in the staple industries, most of their development was concentrated in the south and east of the country away from the staple centres in the north and west, their growth provided employment for 12.7% of the British work force in 1930.192 Though their benefits were primarily in the domestic market, they also contributed ‘very satisfactorily’ to Britain’s exports. 193 These increases contrasted with
187 C. P. Kindleberger, The World In Depression 1929-1939 (London: Allen Lane, 1973), 86. 188 P. Dewey, War and Progress: Britain 1914-1945 (London: Longman, 1997), 53. 189 H. W. Richardson, Economic Recovery in Britain 1932-1939 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967), 104, 109. 190 Ibid., 179. 191 Dewey, War and Progress, 228. 192 Mowat, Between the Wars, 273. 193 Richardson, Economic Recovery, 53. 28
declining exports of staple products and contributed positively to Britain’s balance of trade at a time of high national indebtedness and unemployment. Their development had to be encouraged. The maintenance of consumer spending was essential to the continued growth of these industries and therefore to Britain’s recovery from the Depression. To embark on a programme of rearmament in the early- to mid-thirties risked upsetting this improvement and worsening Britain’s already fragile financial position. Economic necessity in the thirties, as in the twenties, prevented Britain from maintaining a sufficient level of armaments to guarantee her national and Imperial security.
In the early thirties Britain’s adherence to orthodox financial policies was challenged by John Maynard Keynes. Keynes argued that Britain’s economic recovery could not survive while the Government continued to investigate the ‘obscure and difficult...effect of price changes on the distribution of consumers’ purchasing power.’ 194 Keynes saw increased employment and prosperity as a product of ‘the expectation of an improved margin of profit.’195 In The Means to Prosperity Keynes both outlines the effectiveness of the multiplier effect and offers, unintentionally, a reason for the hesitance of the British Government to implement his economic theories. Though it can be argued that his theory agreed ‘with the instinctive promptings of commonsense,’ that employment provided for in public works produces ‘further employment’ and that there was ‘no possibility of balancing the Budget except by increasing the national income’ the multiplier effect was, in his own words, an ‘untried’ option. 196 Martin Kirby also argues that earlier rearmament as a public work, perhaps after the German reintroduction of conscription in 1935, could have lowered unemployment by citing the beginning of rearmament after 1936 as an essential factor in preventing unemployment reaching 3,000,000 during the 1937 recession. 197 While rearmament certainly helped lower unemployment in the later thirties, to have initiated the programme before efforts at a negotiated settlement to an international crisis had been attempted would have been both unpopular among the public and potentially damaging to Britain’s economy.
In the years between the publication of The Means to Prosperity and 1936 Britain was recovering from the effects of the Great Depression. This fledgling recovery was not the time to depart from orthodox financial policies that were encouraging national economic growth.
194 Keynes in a letter to The Times. 5 December 1930. D. Moggridge (ed.) The Collected Writings of J. M. Keynes: Volume XX (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1981), 472. 195 Ibid. 196 J. M. Keynes, The Means to Prosperity (London: Macmillan, 1933), 7, 9, 14, 36-37. 197 M. W. Kirby, Decline of British Economic Power (London: Allen and Unwin, 1981), 80. 29
While it can be argued that Britain may have been able to afford rearmament if she had been prepared to take great financial risk, and attempted to harness Keynes’ multiplier effect, the idea was against the conventional wisdom of the Treasury. As well as this, due to the prevalence of pacifism it is unlikely that the additional revenue generated by the multiplier effect could have been diverted to rearmament. As the public were opposed to rearmament until at least late 1935 the implementation of Keynesian economics would have had little impact on Britain’s response to the remilitarization of the Rhineland and posed a risk, according to the orthodoxy of the time, of an uncontrolled rise in prices that would adversely affect Britain’s new industries which were responsible for 46.7% of the increase in British GDP between 1932 and 1937. 198 These were stimulated by, and relied on, consumer spending. The effect of domestic inflation caused by a deficit-financed rearmament programme, or public-works, could, according to the conventional view of the time, decrease consumer spending by raising prices. Opposition to deficit-financed rearmament actually ‘stiffened’ in Britain after 1933 as the Government believed it would lead to ‘a collapse of confidence.’ 199 As well as these financial risks, rearmament would increase demand in factories devoted to armament production, diverting machinery, materials and workers away from factories connected to the new industries. This would have a ‘crippling effect’ on the British economy recovery. 200 To increase consumer spending and encourage international trade the National Government relaxed the taxes and tariffs introduced during the Depression to support the pound. As a result expenditure on the armed forces ‘had to be held’ between 2.7% and 3% of national expenditure despite the need for far greater funds. 201 It was, therefore, economically best for Britain to avoid expenditure to restore her military strength for as long as possible to allow the recovery of her economic strength.
Conclusion
Due to the socio-economic situation of the inter-war years Britain could not maintain sufficient armed forces to defend her world-wide interests if faced with simultaneous serious threats. Rearmament in the years to 1935 was an unpopular and risky policy for the British
198 S. Pollard, The Development of the British Economy 1914-1990 (New York: Arnold, 1992), 42. 199 W. Garside, “The Great Depression 1929-1933,” in Economic Disasters of the Twentieth Century, ed. M. J. Oliver and D. H. Aldcroft, 77, (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2007). 200 P. A. Papayoanou, “Economic Interdependence and the Balance of Power,” International Studies Quarterly 41, No. 1. (1997): 132. 201 K. Narizny, “Both Guns or Butter or Neither: Class Interests in the Political Economy of Rearmament,” The American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, No. 2 (2003): 210. 30
government. It was opposed by the vast majority of the British public until at least late-1935 to February 1936.202 Even if Britain had maintained her economic strength in the inter-war years the opposition of the newly pacific public to large military expenditure would almost certainly have prevented the Government from maintaining the level of armed forces necessary to meet the combined threats of Imperial unrest, Italy, Japan, Germany and the Soviet Union. To this social shift must be added the serious economic difficulties of the inter- war years. The maintenance of military forces above the absolute minimum required for security through deficit-financed rearmament was economically unthinkable to a Government committed to the orthodoxy of a balanced budget indicating economic strength. To rely on an untested theory like the multiplier effect during the thirties was a risky policy during a fledgling economic recovery. These factors together meant that the Government had little choice but to allow Britain’s military forces to decline in the twenties and thirties, despite their recognition of numerous serious and growing global threats. To counter the threats of the thirties would require ‘very heavy expenditure.’203 Such expenditure could scarcely be afforded by the Treasury – and would not be tolerated by the public – in the years to 1936 and Britain therefore remained militarily weak. With insufficient military strength Britain could not effectively oppose the aggressive foreign policies of Japan, Germany and Italy in the thirties and instead had to pursue a passive foreign policy based on negotiation and diplomacy – appeasement.
202 In a letter to Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald noted that the British public was finally ready ‘to accept a programme of considerably increased military preparations.’ Enclosure in the British White Paper on Defence (1936), February 1936. PREM 1/192. 203 Sir Samuel Hoare during a House of Commons debate on defence held 9 March 1936. 309 HC Debs 5s Col. 1866. 31
CHAPTER II: A DANGER EVEN TO THE CAUSE OF PEACE
Introduction
As has been stated, Britain had to restrict her military spending in the twenties and thirties to adapt to the changed social and economic conditions of the inter-war years. To meet her financial obligations, and appease the public, the British Government implemented the ‘ten- year rule’ in 1919. Under this policy it was ‘assumed, for framing revised [defence] estimates, that the British Empire [would] not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years.’204 It was recommended that the ‘maximum’ annual expenditure on the Navy should be limited to £60,000,000 while the Army and Air Force would receive £75,000,000.205 Such restrictions on military expenditure are, in light of the social and economic conditions detailed above and because of the creation of the League of Nations, justifiable. The ‘ten-year rule’ was, therefore, a reasonable policy in the twenties. Britain ‘stripped her defences to the bone’ in the twenties and early thirties ‘in the hope that other countries would follow [her] example.’206 By the mid-thirties, though, Britain’s weakness had, because of the deteriorated international situation, ‘not only become a danger to herself, but a danger even to the cause of peace.’207 During the thirties Britain’s military decline was exposed by a series of serious threats to her national and Imperial security. Given the extent of her military weakness Britain had to ‘put [her] own house in order’ before responding forcefully to these threats.208 Each crisis that confronted the British during the thirties required careful handling and astute judgement, which the Cabinet provided, allowing Britain to delay the outbreak of the Second World War until she had made substantial progress in her rearmament programme. These threats, both internal and external to the Empire, occurred in such a short period that Britain’s efforts to remedy her military weakness were insufficient to ensure her security. The potential responses of the British Government to the crises of the thirties were, therefore, severely limited. To risk war before the completion of her rearmament programme was a dangerous tactic. By seeking to appease, rather than oppose international aggressors in an unsafe world,
204 Conclusion from the 15 August 1919 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/15, 3. 205 Ibid., 4. 206 Philip Sassoon during a House of Commons debate on the Air Estimates (1935) held 19 March 1935. 299 HC Debs 5s Col. 1016. 207 Ibid. 208 Douglas Hacking during a House of Commons debate on the Army Estimates (1935) 18 March 1935. 299 HC Debs 5s Col. 846. 32
during this period of weakness Britain was able to maintain the facade of a first-rate military power and spare sufficient military forces to police the increasingly restless Empire.
Army
The Army was the ‘main victim’ of the restrictions of the ‘ten-year rule’ and its effect was ‘all but crippling.’209 Norman Gibbs claims that the Army was, ‘by any standard,’ below strength in ammunition, equipment and manpower during the mid-thirties.210 Alfred Duff Cooper warned that Britain’s potential expeditionary force in 1936, two infantry divisions, could ‘not be provided with up-to-date armaments and equipment and would not be “fit for war” according to modern standards.’ 211 The speed of re-equipment was so severely handicapped by the inter-war decline of Britain’s armaments industries that Duff Cooper believed that Britain would not be ‘prepared for war’ before the summer of 1939.212 Michael Postan claims that the industrial facilities available to the Army had, because of the ‘ten-year rule,’ ‘declined to almost the lowest point since the Crimean War.’213 Of the 250 national armament factories established during the First World War ‘only three were retained through the inter-war period, and these were held in reserve and not rehabilitated until 1936-1937.’214 In tanks, a decisive weapon in the First World War, deficiencies were especially serious. In July 1936 the designs for Britain’s new generation of tanks were incomplete.215 The situation was complicated further by the War Office’s orders for ‘no fewer than four categories of tank’ and insufficient industrial capacity to produce such equipment.216 However, even if these deficiencies in technology, equipment and facilities could be rectified, the War Office would still be faced with a serious shortage of front-line and reserve troops to deploy in the event of an emergency. Maintaining an army of the size required by the British Empire became an ‘acute’ problem for the War Office and this contributed to Britain’s efforts to resolve global crises through appeasement despite the recognised dangers of such a policy.217
209 M. M. Postan, British War Production (London: HMSO, 1952), 6. 210 N. H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy Volume I: Rearmament Policy (London: HMSO, 1976), 115. 211 Duff Cooper in a memorandum on The Organization, Armament and Equipment of the Army circulated 4 December 1936. CAB 24/265, 4. 212 Ibid., 5. 213 Postan, War Production, 7. 214 G. C. Peden, Arms, Economics and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 140. 215 Thomas Inskip during a Cabinet discussion on Britain’s defence requirements held 29 July 1936. CAB 23/85, 25. 216 Peden, Dreadnoughts, 124. 217 Duff Cooper, memorandum on the Need for Expansion of Section A of the Army Reserve published 30 November 1936. CAB 24/265, 2. 33
As early as 1931 it was realised that the British Army was ‘incapable of fulfilling [its] international obligations.’218 It was estimated in 1935 that the Regular Army ‘required’ 66 battalions for defence of the Empire and should maintain a battalion at home for every one stationed overseas. 219 This meant Britain required 132 battalions to ensure security yet possessed only 126. 220 The Regular Army was, in the opinion of Duff Cooper, ‘barely sufficient’ for even its peace-time commitments in 1936.221 Britain’s Army had declined between 1914 and 1936 by more than 21 battalions even though her commitments were ‘greater than ever.’ 222 Likewise, the Territorial Army was numerically below strength by 40,000 men in the thirties and was deemed ‘insufficient’ for its designated war-time duties due to its numerical weakness and failure ‘to achieve more than elementary levels of training’ because of a shortage of equipment.223 In contrast the German army had grown to 400,000 men by autumn 1935 and was training a new division every month.224 Without a highly trained Territorial Army Britain would, as in the First World War, be faced with a serious dilution of its front-line force by an inadequately trained reserve. In the years before the Rhineland Crisis the British public simply did not enlist or were deemed unsuitable for service, ‘mainly due to living in poverty,’ but the Rhineland Crisis, and the later examples of Hitler’s hostile intentions, created ‘the psychological moment for a great drive in recruiting.’ 225 Between 1936 and 1939 Britain was able to ‘completely modernise’ her artillery and infantry and recruit sufficient troops to risk war.226 While problems still existed with the provision of certain equipment and in training, the worst deficiencies of the early thirties were overcome in the later thirties. If Britain had gone to war with Germany to prevent the remilitarization of the Rhineland, or to prevent the earlier aggressive actions of Japan or Italy, she would have fought against at least one formidable power with inadequate
218 George Milne, Military Appreciation of the Situation in Europe, March 1931. 31 March 1931. CAB 24/220, 6. 219 Hacking during a House of Commons debate on 18 March 1935 on the Army Estimates (1935). 299 HC Debs 5s Col. 841-842. 220 Ibid. 221 Duff Cooper, Need for Expansion of Section A of the Army Reserve, 30 November 1936. CAB 24/265, 2. 222 British White Paper, Statement relating to Defence, 3 March 1936. CAB 24/260, 11. 223 Duff Cooper, Recruiting for the Army, 2 April 1936. CAB 24/261, 4; D. French, “Big Wars and Small Wars Between the Wars 1919-1939,” in Big Wars and Small Wars: The British Army and the Lessons of War in the Twentieth Century, ed. H. Strachan, 48 (London: Routledge, 2006). 224 W. Deist, “The Rearmament of the Wehrmacht,” in Germany and the Second World War, ed. Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, 425 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Churchill during a debate on the Foreign Office in the British House of Commons on 31 May 1935. 302 HC Debs 5s Col 1492. 225 Hannington claims that of the 95,270 men who volunteered for service in 1933 only 28,841 passed medical tests. The rest were deemed unfit for service. Hannington, Unemployed Struggles, 272; Duff Cooper, Recruiting for the Army, 2 April 1936. CAB 24/261, 4. 226 Peden, Dreadnoughts, 125. 34
equipment, insufficiently trained troops and without the surge in recruitment engendered by Hitler’s later expansionist efforts.
Navy
During the twenties Britain, ‘for the first time since Trafalgar,’ lost her position as the world’s undisputed naval power. 227 Before the crises of the thirties a naval rearmament programme sufficient to restore Britain’s traditional two-power standard was ‘politically out of the question in a war-weary and idealistic Britain.’228 Gibbs called the disarmament of the Royal Navy ‘the most striking’ aspect of the Government’s military policy in the inter-war years.229 Postan claims that Britain’s Navy in the years to 1930 was ‘numerically sufficient’ – though even this was questioned by the Admiralty.230 Despite this financial factors prevented the modernising of battleships which meant that the fleet was weakened by a ‘great proportion of old ships.’231 George Peden, however, challenges this ‘conventional picture’ of Britain’s naval decline.232 He notes that Britain ‘continued to order more warships than other powers both before and after rearmament began in 1936’ and claims that though the number employed in shipbuilding in Britain did decline, the industry continued to enjoy ‘the benefit of supplying the largest navy in the world.’233 These benefits have, however, perhaps been overstated by Peden. As with the Army, and, the Air Force as will be seen, the decline in capacity of Britain’s armaments industry undermined the progress of her later rearmament programme. Postan especially highlighted the ‘growing weakness of the industrial reserves’ in Britain.234 Hoare, during his time as First Lord of the Admiralty, warned that as Britain had produced no new capital ships for over a decade the number of firms and skilled workers available for rearmament was ‘small.’ 235 The reasons for this decline were, simply, the ‘clamant desire for economy’ in Government expenditure and the decline of British ship- building in the inter-war years.236 The financial cost of maintaining her traditional two-power standard was prohibitively expensive and so instead of embarking on a costly, if not
227 W. Jackson, Withdrawal from Empire: A Military View (London: B. T. Batsford, 1986), 20. 228 Ibid., 21. 229 Gibbs, Grand Strategy I, 3. 230 Leo Amery, former First Lord of the Admiralty, claimed that the Navy had been restricted ‘without regard to [Britain’s] needs and warned of Japan’s growing naval strength during a debate on Britain’s naval estimates held 14 March 1935. 299 HC Debs 5s Col. 650-651; Postan, War Production, 3. 231 Postan, War Production, 3. 232 Peden, Dreadnoughts, 140. 233 Ibid. 234 Postan, War Production, 4. 235 Hoare, The Two New Capital Ships, 25 June 1936. CAB 24/263, 2. 236 Frederick Field, Appreciation of the General Naval Situation in 1931, 10 April 1931. CAB 24/220, 10. 35
unaffordable, programme of construction to ensure superiority over the American and Japanese, and later German, navies Britain pursued and secured the negotiated limitation of naval armaments in the inter-war years.
While Britain’s acceptance of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty, the 1930 London Naval Treaty and the 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement can be seen as evidence of her naval decline, these together allowed Britain to retain her position among the world’s leading naval powers ‘at a cost that [she] could afford.’237 Even without her traditional two-power standard Britain was, due to combined limits imposed by the Washington, London and Anglo-German agreements, able to theoretically meet her own minimum security requirements. Peden claims that the British Admiralty were ‘glad to accept Hitler’s thirty-five percent offer’ during the negotiations of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement because this limit, combined with the limits imposed on the Japanese Navy in the Washington and London Treaties, seemed to assure Britain of her ability to wage a sea war with both Germany and Japan simultaneously without risking a numerical disadvantage.238 Because of her superior naval strength at the signing of these treaties, their effects were more severe on the British navy than the other powers. While Britain scrapped her most overage tonnage to come down to the limits, Japan and Germany built modern vessels to reach the limits. It was estimated that while by early 1937 Japan would have modernised the whole of her Fleet; Britain had not constructed a single Capital ship between 1926 and 1936 and had modernised only one.239 Japan had increased her naval strength by ‘thirty-five percent’ between 1914 and 1935; Britain had decreased hers by ‘forty-eight percent.’240 Time and money were required to rectify this decline. During mid-1936 the Admiralty, appreciating Britain’s defensive deficiencies and the weakness of the over-age ships, requested and was granted permission to construct two new capital ships, an aircraft carrier and numerous smaller craft at a cost of over £36,000,000.241 Without Britain’s economic improvement such vital construction could not have been undertaken. When Britain entered the Second World War she did so with around a quarter of her naval tonnage ‘newly built or brought up to date since 1935.’242 Without these improvements Britain would have certainly faced the modern German Navy,
237 Peden, Dreadnoughts, 145. 238 Though, as shall be seen, due to the geographical isolation of the Eastern Empire and speed of escalation of international crises, this assumption was somewhat naive. Ibid., 103. 239 Bolton Eyres Monsell in a statement to the House of Commons made 14 March 1935. 299 HC Debs, 5s Col. 591; Hoare, The Two new Capital Ships, 25 June 1936. CAB 24/263, 2. 240 Eyres Monsell in a statement to the House of Commons on 14 March 1935. 299 HC Debs 5s Col. 599. 241 Quoted from the minutes of a Cabinet meeting held 8 April 1936. CAB 23/83, 4. 242 Peden, Dreadnoughts, 27. 36
and possibly the Italian and Japanese Navies, with the handicap of old equipment and inadequate capacity for replacing lost tonnage. With such deficiencies the British could not confidently expect to defend simultaneously the homeland and world-wide Empire from those that sought to profit from her declining naval strength.
Air Force
The fear of a war in the air has already been explained. The importance of numerical superiority, or even parity, with potential aggressors was deemed vital to national defence. Britain had, during the First World War, been the world’s ‘leading air power,’ yet even this vital service experienced a decline in the inter-war years.243 So much importance was placed on numerical parity that Britain deliberately produced out-dated aircraft that ‘nobody much wanted’ for purely ‘political reasons.’244 Postan claims that the majority of the equipment used by the Royal Air Force in the early thirties had been produced during the First World War.245 Through this ‘rearmament,’ if it can so be called, the British could achieve ‘some kind of security [and] save money for the taxpayer’ simultaneously.246 A strong air force was seen as ‘economical in terms of manpower and money’ for both Imperial policing and as a deterrent to any potential aggressor.247 Unless Britain possessed sufficient aerial strength, and the capacity to replace losses, to ‘strike a potential enemy at least as hard as she [could] hit Britain’ the Cabinet could not consider pursuing a firm policy against any potential aggressor.248 The German announcement that she had achieved air parity with Britain in 1935 resulted in stinging criticism, particularly from Churchill in the House of Commons, and caused concern among the general public.249 Gibbs concluded that, as the fears of the British people were at this time centred on the German air menace, the best defence was ‘a powerful air-force.’ 250 The Government’s decision to prioritise the Air Force can, therefore, be defended. Obsolescence was unimportant to a public concerned with the psychological
243 Gibbs, Grand Strategy I, 46. 244 Peden, Dreadnoughts, 114. 245 Postan, War Production, 5. 246 R. Overy and A. Wheatcroft, The Road to War (Ringwood: Penguin, 1999), 78. 247 Peden, Dreadnoughts, 100. 248 Neville Chamberlain in a memorandum on The Role of the British Army circulated 11 December 1936. CAB 24/265, 3. 249 Although Wilhelm Deist claims that ‘based on the relative strength of the various countries on 1 April 1936, the leaders of the Luftwaffe had to conclude that German air armaments were completely inadequate,’ the fear of this weapon in Britain during the thirties was great. Deist, “The Rearmament of the Wehrmacht,” 501; Churchill warned that air defence was a ‘vital matter’ and claimed it was ‘absolutely certain’ that Britain had lost air parity with Germany. Churchill during a debate on funding for the Foreign Office held 2 May 1935. 301 HC Debs 5s Col. 609-611. 250 Gibbs, Grand Strategy I, 105. 37
benefit gained from paper parity with a potential enemy. The Sub-Committee on Air Raid Precautions warned of a ‘collapse of morale’ or the destruction of ‘vital services’ in Britain following an air raid.251 The public could ‘become so demoralised as to get into unrestrained panic.’252 To guard against this was to prevent defeat and, while the preference given to the Air Force impacted on the provisions for the other services, such a policy is justifiable given the perceived effectiveness of aerial warfare in the mid-thirties. Britain’s rearmament policy certainly gave a ‘clear priority to the air arm.’253 So great was the preference afforded to the Air Force that Gibbs refers to the Government’s plans for the service not as a ‘deficiency plan,’ as he does for both the Army and Navy, but as a ‘rearmament programme.’254 In February 1936 the Air Ministry announced Scheme F and promised the Air Force an additional 8,000 new craft. Despite its obvious preference the development of the British Air Force was subjected to several critical delays in the early thirties. Foreign advancements in strategic long-range bombers had not been pursued in Britain because of the belief that the World Disarmament Conference would outlaw such craft. 255 Similarly, the legacy of the ‘ten-year rule’ meant many aircraft firms ‘found themselves in a position of chronic penury and sometimes on the very verge of bankruptcy’ before the beginning of the rearmament programme.256 The effect of restriction was that the orders placed by the Air Ministry, ‘though just sufficient to keep the bulk of the firms alive,’ were insufficient to allow investment in the research and development necessary to match the progress in aerial armaments made abroad. 257 This had serious consequences for the effectiveness of Britain’s Air Force in the inter-war years. The heavy bombers produced in Britain in 1935 had an effective range of 920 miles with a bomb load of 1,500 lbs; comparable German machines had a range of 932 miles with an estimated bomb load of 3,000 lbs.258 Postan believed that it was ‘probable’ that such ‘technical considerations stood in the way of immediate “all-out” re-equipment’ as the Air Chiefs saw the rearmed Air Force ‘in terms of aircraft which had not fully emerged from design and development.’259 It was, therefore, justifiable to ‘defer until the last moment’ the rearmament of Britain’s Air Force to
251 Report of the Sub-Committee on Air Raid Precautions, 7 July 1937. CAB 23/88, 26. 252 Ramsay MacDonald during a meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence, 25 February 1935. CAB 24/253, 8. 253 Postan, War Production, 14. 254 Gibbs, Grand Strategy I, 107. 255 Peden, Dreadnoughts, 108. 256 Postan, War Production, 5. 257 Ibid. 258 Interim report by the Sub-Committee on Air Parity circulated 8 May 1935. CAB 24/255, 15. 259 Postan, War Production, 15. 38
allow these technological deficiencies to be overcome.260 The speed of advancement in aerial warfare was such that if Britain had followed Churchill’s advice in the early-thirties and invested heavily in aerial rearmament she would, by 1936, possess yet more ‘utterly obsolete material.’261 The experience of the staple industries during the inter-war years helps underline this point. Through the improper use of their financial reserves the staples were left with equipment far below the standard common in other countries and were therefore unable to compete effectively. While the decision to postpone Britain’s aerial rearmament can be defended, the result of the delay was that Britain was unprepared for a war in the air in 1936. In the last years of peace ‘crucial improvements,’ such as development of radar cover and the provision of Hurricane and Spitfire fighters were made to Britain’s air defences. 262 The importance of these to Britain’s war effort was shown during the Battle of Britain. By choosing to appease acts of international aggression in the thirties, including the remilitarization of the Rhineland, the British provided themselves the time necessary to rectify the major deficiencies of not only her Air Force, but also her Army, Navy and reverse the moral disarmament of the British people.
Japan in Asia
Following a series of border skirmishes Japan invaded the Manchuria region of China in September 1931. This event precipitated the end of the ‘ten-year rule’ and began the series of international crises that threatened Britain’s interests during the thirties. That Japan would threaten the British Empire would have been unthinkable before the First World War; the two enjoyed cordial relations and, unusually for the British, a formal alliance. Roy Douglas argues that Britain’s military leaders deliberately over-emphasised the risk to British interests posed by the Japanese. Any aggressive action by the Japanese was, in Douglas’ opinion, ‘likely to bring her simultaneously into conflict with other European powers, and with the United States.’263 Kennedy argues that the ‘gloomy assessments’ made by Britain’s Service Chiefs during the Manchurian Crisis, which prophesised that Japan was ‘poised to gobble up the British Empire in the Far East’ were an attempt to force the abandonment of the ‘ten-year rule’ by deliberately ignoring ‘Tokyo’s anxieties about Russia and the USA, its intractable
260 Major Harry Nathan during a House of Commons debate on the Royal Air Force held 19 March 1935. 299 HC Debs 5s Col. 1127-1128. 261 Austin Hopkinson during a debate on aerial rearmament in the House of Commons held 21 May 1936. 312 HC Debs 5s Col 1458. 262 Peden, Dreadnoughts, 111. 263 R. Douglas, “Chamberlain and Appeasement,” in The Fascist Challenge and the Policy of Appeasement, ed. W. J. Mommsen and L. Kettenacker, 79-80 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1983). 39
military difficulties in the China war [and] its acute dependence on overseas oil supplies.’264 These arguments fail to acknowledge the relative positions of the Soviets and America during the crisis. The Soviets were in 1932 still completing the first of their five-year plans while America continued her isolationist policy and remained mired in the depths of the Great Depression. In the opinion of the Cabinet the Americans were not concerned that Japan was ‘the strongest Power in the Far East.’265 Whether misled by her Service Chiefs or not, the British Cabinet certainly believed that the Japanese were willing to resort to war to increase their prestige and that America would not involve herself in any conflict in the Far East.266 If, as expected, Britain faced further Japanese aggression alone she would be at a serious disadvantage. Given Britain’s naval weaknesses detailed above, her bleak assessment of the result of a war with Japan was almost certainly not exaggerated. It would take the aging British Fleet ‘thirty-eight days’ to reach Singapore after the beginning of hostilities.267 By this time Britain’s eastern ports would, due to their inadequate defences, ‘be liable to capture, or at least to the destruction of their facilities before the arrival of the Fleet.’268 Without these vital bases the British would be placed at a serious disadvantage. The British ships already stationed in the region were ‘incapable of effective resistance’ to an attack by the modern Japanese vessels.269 Worse ‘the whole of [Britain’s] territory in the Far East, as well as the coastline of India and the Dominions and [Britain’s] vast trade and shipping’ were ‘open to attack’ by the Japanese.270 In this dangerous situation efforts to secure a diplomatic solution, or, as was eventually the case, a simple tacit understanding of Japan’s increased influence in the region, made greater strategic sense than a noble war which risked so much for so little at a time of British weakness.
The perceived threat posed to India was, almost certainly, exaggerated. The threats to other areas of the Eastern Empire were, however, probably not exaggerated. Douglas flippantly describes Japan as being ‘a long way off,’ and therefore deemed the Japanese a
264 P. Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy 1870-1945: Eight Studies (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1983), 213. 265 Cabinet conclusions from the 29 January 1932 meeting. CAB 23/70, 20. 266 Baldwin is quoted by Thomas Jones as having said that if Britain enforced an economic boycott against Japan, Britain would find ‘war declared by Japan.’ Thomas Jones in his diary on 27 February 1934 quoted from K. Middlemas and J. Barnes Baldwin: A Biography (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969), 729; The British Cabinet concluded during the 29 January 1932 meeting that ‘America always leaves [Britain] to do the difficult work vis-a-vis Japan.’ CAB 23/70, 20. 267 The Annual Review of Imperial Defence Policy for 1932 by the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence. 17 March 1932. CAB 24/229, 26. 268 Ibid., 7. 269 Ibid., 6. 270 Ibid., 7. 40
lesser threat to Britain’s security.271 While Japan was ‘a long way’ from the British mainland, she was far closer than Britain to important regions of the Eastern Empire. Britain had won and policed this Empire by virtue of her superior naval strength. In 1932 the Admiralty estimated that Japan either possessed or was working towards an equal tonnage of submarines with Britain, around seventy percent of Britain’s tonnage in destroyers and sixty percent of Britain’s cruiser and battleship strength.272 This impressive force, and the need for the British Navy to protect interests across the globe, convinced the Cabinet that Britain was ‘incapable of checking Japan in any way if she really means business’ during the Manchurian Crisis; Britain would simply have to ‘swallow any and every humiliation’ inflicted by Japan in the Far East.273 The Cabinet believed that to ‘put pressure on Japan’ over Manchuria would be ‘both useless and dangerous.’274 With her military strength restricted, and without the allies necessary for a war against a formidable sea power, Britain was left with little choice but to acquiesce to Japan’s new position in Manchuria. The ‘ten-year rule,’ while limiting military expenditure ‘beyond the financial capacity of the country’ also prevented the British from responding with her military to the Manchurian Crisis.275 Japan had begun to discredit the ‘previous arguments in favour of appeasement’ and provoked a fundamental shift in British military policy. 276 While the Empire before 1930 had been ‘a source of British strength’ after 1930 it became a ‘source of fundamental weakness.’277 The ‘ten-year rule’ was abandoned and Britain began to plan her rearmament to rectify her weakness. However, before improvements in her military position became tangible Britain was again threatened by the actions of another power in a position to expose the weaknesses caused by the ‘ten- year rule.’
271 Douglas, ‘Chamberlain and Appeasement,’ 79-80. 272 The Washington Naval Treaty, agreed in 1922, had set a ratio of 5:5:3:1:1 respectively for total tonnage of the American, British, Japanese, French and Italian navies. Figures of Japanese tonnage in 1932 quoted by Bolton Eyres-Monsell in the British House of Commons during a debate on Naval Armaments on 11 July 1932. 268 HC Debs 5s Col 913-916; Asada claims that in 1932 Japan had built ‘close to the 70% ratio’ allowed by the Washington Naval Treaty. S. Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbour: The Imperial Japanese Navy and the United States (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2006), 188. 273 Vansittart commenting on a memorandum produced for the Cabinet on the Manchurian Crisis by J. T. Pratt entitled The Shanghai Situation, circulated 1 February 1932. R. Butler Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939 Second Series Volume IX, 1931- 1932 (London: HMSO, 1965), 283. 274 Memorandum produced by the British Foreign Office, ‘History of the Dispute between China and Japan,’ 8 March 1932. CAB 24/228, 10; Simon warned that while Britain ‘must strive to be fair to both sides’ she could ‘not involve [herself] in trouble with Japan.’ From a memorandum on The Lytton Report: Japan and the League of Nations. 19 November 1932. CAB 24/235, 4. 275 Italicised in original. Note by the Treasury on the Annual Review for 1932 by the Chiefs of Staff Sub- Committee. 17 March 1932. CAB 24/229, 4. 276 Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 34. 277 Overy and Wheatcroft, The Road to War, 74. 41
Germany in Europe
Britain had long been aware that Germany was secretly rearming and had hoped that the World Disarmament Conference would resolve the issue before it became ‘unbearably acute’ by allowing either a measure of German rearmament or inducing the other powers to disarm to the German level.278 To the British the German demands for armaments, 300,000 troops and parity in the air with the other European powers, were reasonable.279 Ramsay MacDonald admitted in late 1934 that ‘the prospects of achieving [a] general agreement on disarmament [at Geneva] were not very hopeful’ but still ‘held the conviction that it might be possible to achieve some limited objective.’280 French intransigence, understandable due to her fear of another German invasion, contributed to the failure of the Conference. The reasons for this intransigence were, however, not understood by the British. Horst Köpke noted the British possessed a ‘greater understanding for the German point of view’ than for the French.281 Without a treaty restricting armaments in Europe Britain’s weakness would become even more apparent. When Germany announced her intention to train 500,000 troops and reintroduce conscription Britain responded by agreeing to a treaty which limited the German Navy to thirty-five percent of the total tonnage of the British Fleet. This reaction to Germany’s unilateral violation of the Treaty of Versailles seems, at first glance, to be incongruous. Germany was forbidden to maintain an army of more than 100,000 effectives or a navy of any size under the Treaty of Versailles. Britain therefore not only condoned the restoration of an unrestricted German Army, but also encouraged and allowed the restoration of Germany as a naval-power. Disarmament was seen by the British Government as ‘essential’ to ensure the survival of the League of Nations and the Empire, yet the British ignored and then accepted the remilitarization of German society. 282 Jordan criticises the apparent ‘incoherence’ of this British policy vis-à-vis German rearmament.283 Although the Naval Agreement with Germany is undoubtedly an example of the prevalent pragmatism in Britain’s foreign policy during the thirties, to criticise the Government’s efforts to reach a
278 Sir John Simon, Germany’s Illegal Rearmament and its effect on British Policy, 21 March 1934. CAB 24/248, 3. 279 In a report prepared jointly by the Foreign Office and the three defence services on 25 January 1935 it was stated that the War Office would ‘agree’ to a German Army of 300,000 effectives. CAB 24/253, 4. 280 Ramsay MacDonald in a report on the Disarmament Conference produced 31 October 1934. CAB 24/251, 3. 281 Horst Köpke, Director of Department II (Western, Southern and South-Eastern Europe) in the German Foreign Office, in a memorandum on French policy after Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations circulated 13 November 1933. DGFP Series C Vol. II, 117. 282 C. Barnett, Collapse of British Power (London: Methuen, 1972), 285. 283 W. M. Jordan, Great Britain, France and the German Problem 1918-1939 (London: Cass, 1971), 153. 42
formal agreement with Germany is to ignore the wider diplomatic and military context of the early- to mid-thirties.
While Britain’s military advisors may have over-emphasised the dangers faced by Britain in the thirties, and subsequent writers can be accused of ‘over-interpreting’ these accounts such dangers undoubtedly did exist.284 The Anglo-German Naval Agreement must be viewed in this context. Watt claims that the British concluded the Naval Agreement without ‘realizing or even discussing the diplomatic consequences of their action in Europe,’ 285 yet this does not tally with the historical record of the period. The Cabinet understood that if no naval agreement was reached in 1935 Germany ‘could well return the next year with a demand for sixty percent of the strength of the British Fleet.’286 Even France was informed of Britain’s intentions.287 To insist on Germany’s strict adherence to the Treaty of Versailles, while legally justifiable, was not in Britain’s best interests. An uncompromising position would simply perpetuate the diplomatic difficulties of the inter-war years and eventually lead to open defiance by Germany. While it may seem an odd concept – the rearmament of Germany as a step towards world peace – there are several logical defences of such a policy. Firstly, for Britain in the thirties ‘one enemy less would be as major an accretion of strength as one resoundingly defeated.’288 To secure naval détente with Germany was to satisfy one of Germany’s ‘legitimate aims’ and prevent a repetition of an earlier tense Anglo-German naval race.289 While the Anglo-German Naval Agreement increased the level of armaments in Europe, it also limited them. Without limitation – and with the constant menace of Japan in the Far East – Britain faced an unenviable situation. The World Disarmament Conference had taught the British that if Germany was refused permission to build a navy she would simply increase her demands and then construct an unrestricted navy that would threaten the ability of the British to simultaneously defend the mainland and the Empire.290 Secondly, at this time there was little reason to suspect Hitler’s future intentions.
284 Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 213 285 D. C. Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War (London: Heinemann, 1989), 22. 286 Hoesch in a telegram to the German Foreign Ministry on 15 August 1935. DGFP Series C Vol. IV, 559. 287 In his autobiography Hoare claims that the French Government were ‘unofficially informed’ of Britain’s intention to negotiate a naval agreement with Germany. Viscount Templewood, Nine Troubled Years (London: Collins, 1954), 140-141. 288 Watt, How War Came, 27. 289 M. Newman, “The Origins of Munich: British Foreign Policy in Danubian Europe 1933 – 1937,” The Historical Journal 21, no. 2, (1978): 382. 290 John Simon and Neville Chamberlain warned that Britain did not anticipate that she would have to fight Germany ‘single-handed’ and that Britain could ‘reasonably hope to escape ultimate disaster if the hostilities were confined to European nations.’ However, given Japan’s attitude during the period, Britain could be forced to divide her forces between Europe and Asia with the result that ‘not only would India, Hong Kong and 43
His promise during negotiations to accept ‘Britain’s absolute supremacy at sea...forever’ seemed legitimate.291 Thirdly, the effect of a German repudiation of the naval agreement on British public opinion must be considered. Richard Overy and Andrew Wheatcroft refer to the conclusion of the Munich agreement as ‘a time of great danger, almost a disaster for the British Empire...if Hitler went back on his word home and foreign opinion, the moral argument, would all be on Britain’s side.’292 This argument can also be applied to the Anglo- German Naval Agreement. If Germany violated this agreement Britain’s leaders would have a concrete example of Germany’s hostile intentions. This could be used to justify a rapid rearmament programme to the general public that was desperately needed given the unpredictable nature of international events in the thirties.
Italy in Africa
In the background of the crisis surrounding Germany’s illegal rearmament were growing tensions between Italy and Abyssinia. Following the League of Nation’s ruling on the Walwal incident in October 1935 Italy invaded Abyssinia. In response Britain and the other League Powers introduced sanctions against Italy. Again, British policy in response to this crisis may appear confusing. To defend Abyssinia, a country whose League membership the British had actively opposed, Britain alienated her Locarno co-guarantor at a time of growing German menace. Corelli Barnett severely criticises this response, claiming that during the thirties ‘the friendship of Italy had become of immense strategic as well as political value to France and England.’293 Eden, in Barnett’s opinion, lacked ‘understanding of strategy or the world-balance of power, or the likely strategic consequences to England of his League idealism’ during the Abyssinian Crisis.294 Italian ‘imperialism,’ it has been argued, ‘was not of itself a threat in 1935.’295 It was, however, vital for Britain to avoid ‘Mussolini being driven into the German camp.’296 To prevent closer ties between the dictators Britain would have had to accept the invasion of the territory of one League member by another, effectively admitting that the League of Nations, collective security and non-military sanctions had
Australasia be in dire peril,’ but Britain faced a ‘far greater danger of destruction’ at the hands of Germany. The Future of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 16 October 1934. CAB 24/250, 2. 291 Record of a conversation between Hitler and Simon on the Anglo-German Naval Agreement held 26 March 1935. DGFP Series C Vol. III, 1067. 292 Overy and Wheatcroft, The Road to War, 107. 293 Barnett, Collapse, 352. 294 Ibid., 357. 295 Overy and Wheatcroft, The Road to War, 85. 296 Hoare quoting Pierre Laval. Templewood, Nine Troubled Years, 169. 44
failed as a deterrent to war. By introducing sanctions against Italy Britain embittered a friend and potential ally against Germany. As the British public had ‘nailed’ the Government to a foreign policy based on the League during the Peace Ballot the decision to oppose Italy can be justified, yet given Britain’s weakened state friendly relations with Italy were potentially invaluable.297 The ‘whole rickety and overstrained structure of imperial defence’ depended on free passage of British ships through the Mediterranean and Britain, by supporting Abyssinia, had embarrassed Mussolini.298 An argument can be made that Britain should have allowed Italy to invade Abyssinia unchallenged rather than implement an aggressive foreign policy that embittered relations between the Locarno guarantors, threatened the passage of British vessels through the Mediterranean and endangered the security of the Eastern Empire. However, this argument ignores the wider implications and possible underlying intentions of Italy’s move.
Britain’s response to the crisis involved a substantial redeployment of her forces which weakened other areas of the Empire ‘to the extent which might have involved grave risks’ in the event of another emergency. 299 Clearly, therefore, the British Cabinet felt threatened by Italy’s move. The reason for this is simple: the region in which Italy had acted was one of ‘vital importance’ to Britain.300 Britain depended on the safe passage of her fleet through the Suez Canal to reinforce her Eastern Empire. Italy’s action, like Japan’s in Manchuria, had shown a desire for territorial expansion and a disregard for the Covenant of the League of Nations. Further Italian aggression in the region could result in her seizing ‘both keys of the gate to the Mediterranean,’ replacing Britain as the dominant power in the region.301 Without British control of the Suez Canal Japan could be encouraged to launch a further aggressive move against Britain’s interests. Despite her posturing, and, as demonstrated by the outcry over the Hoare-Laval pact, the support of public opinion, the Cabinet was unwilling to risk war. Conversely Mussolini had warned that Italy was prepared to ‘choose war even if it meant that the whole of Europe went up in a blaze’ in 1935.302 If Britain had declared war she ‘almost certainly’ risked losing a substantial number of ships
297 Barnett, Collapse, 360. 298 Barnett, Collapse, 352. 299 Statement relating to Defence, 3 March 1936. CAB 24/260, 7. 300 Baldwin during a Cabinet discussion on the Anglo-Egyptian treaty negotiations. 29 April 1936. CAB 23/84, 22. 301 Owen O’Malley, former Chargé d'Affaires in Beijing, in a minute on planning for war in the Mediterranean circulated 4 March 1937. DBFP Second Series Vol. XVIII, 345. 302 Drummond reporting a conversation with Mussolini to Hoare on 30 October 1935. DBFP Second Series Vol. XV, 197. 45
that she could ill afford given the growing Japanese and German threats.303 Britain’s initial firmness during the crisis can be defended as a ‘bluff’ to overawe the ‘much less formidable’ Italians in a move that could vindicate the League and, possibly, moderate the aggressive designs of the Japanese and Germans. 304 Due to Britain’s weakness, and Italy’s determination, Britain was forced into inaction. Despite Italy’s generally second-rate military strength her air force was ‘efficient’ and ‘not to be underestimated,’ outnumbered the British force ‘by not less than four to one’ and could, in the opinion of Italian tacticians, ‘destroy half the British Mediterranean Fleet.’ 305 In light of this possibility Britain’s choice was ‘simple.’306 The preservation of peace, not the maintenance of Abyssinian sovereignty, was the ‘essential pre-condition’ for the survival of the Empire.307 By avoiding war with Japan, Germany or Italy following their threatening moves Britain was able to prevent her weakened military forces from being fatally over-stretched. Through the preservation of peace Britain was able to contend with the numerous, and serious, outbreaks of dissatisfaction with British rule throughout the Empire.
External and Internal Imperial Threats
Kennedy argues that though the Empire was ‘very vulnerable’ in the thirties, Britain’s potential enemies feared and mistrusted each other to such an extent that any combination of powers to usurp Britain’s position was ‘impossible.’308 While an Italo-German combination was unlikely prior to 1936 due to mutual animosity over Austria, the British Cabinet was convinced that similar combinations, for example, a union of Japan and Germany, or unilateral action by either the three aforementioned powers or the Soviet Union was possible. As these external threats coincided with serious internal unrest and Britain’s military decline the defence of her ‘overextended’ Empire represented a pressing concern for the British.309 In
303 Drummond to Hoare, ibid., 77. 304 Otto von Bismarck, counsellor at the German embassy in London, believed Britain had been ‘bluffing’ over Abyssinia and that if Italy had declared war Britain would have been ‘in a critical position.’ 1 July 1936. DGFP Series C Vol. V, 712; Eden in a memorandum on the Problems facing the British Government in the Mediterranean as a result of the Italo-League Dispute published 10 June 1936. CAB 24/262, 2. 305 Minute by G. H. Thompson on the situation in Abyssinia, 28 May 1936. DBFP Second Series Vol. XVI, 459- 460; Overy claims that Italy possessed ‘six times as many men and aircraft’ in the region than Britain. Overy and Wheatcroft, 74; Drummond informing the Foreign Office on 13 December 1935 of information received from a Romanian diplomat. DBFP Second Series Volume XV, 476. 306 Eden in a memorandum on the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, 8 June 1936. CAB 24/262, 2. 307 Overy and Wheatcroft, The Road to War, 75. 308 Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 214. 309 Ibid., 13. 46
relation to Britain’s military strength in the thirties her Empire was an ‘absurdity.’310 The situation in Egypt was among the most serious threats to Imperial security. During negotiations to ensure the continued presence of British troops in the country, especially in the vicinity of the Suez Canal, Eden noted that Italy’s action in Abyssinia had ‘impressed’ Egyptian public opinion.311 Italy, Eden believed, had fanned an ‘anti-British propaganda’ campaign in Egypt.312 As well as the possibility of ‘widespread and violent disturbances’ in Egypt encouraged by Italy, increased Italian influence in the region was also perceived as a threat to Britain’s position in the Sudan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia.313
Following Italy’s occupation of Addis Ababa Mussolini was free to decrease Italy’s presence in Abyssinia and ‘concentrate a force that was much larger than [the British] forces opposite them in the Sudan’ which Eden believed would have ‘considerable effect’ in the region. 314 Eden believed that Mussolini might, in order to distract the Italian public’s attention from domestic issues, ‘risk everything’ and attack Britain’s interests in the region. 315 Eden believed that Mussolini saw ‘the Sudan, Egypt, and [control of] the Mediterranean’ as ‘remunerative objectives.’316 Through another triumph in the region Italy would, Eden warned, gain ‘effective control of the Red Sea [setting] her astride [Britain’s] main line of Imperial communications.’ 317 The likelihood of further Italian action can, however, be questioned. Italy’s ability to wage another war in the region was undermined by resistance to her presence in Abyssinia. Despite the fall of Addis Ababa on 5 May 1936 Italy had only occupied about a third of the country and would spend the years to 1941 seeking unsuccessfully to complete her conquest of Abyssinia.318 Robert Mallett, however, believes that the Italian seizure of Addis Ababa led to Mussolini in October 1936 preparing plans for another ‘war of expansion’ in North Africa.319 The crisis also led to a strengthening of ties
310 Barnett, Collapse, 125. 311 Eden reporting to the Cabinet during a debate on Italy and Abyssinia on 22 April 1936. CAB 23/84, 9. 312 Draft minutes of a meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence held to discuss the Anglo-Egyptian Treaty on 27 April 1936. CAB 24/262, 5. 313 Eden, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, 8 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 4. 314 Eden during a Cabinet discussion on the Italo-Abyssinian Dispute held 29 April 1936. CAB 23/84, 10. 315 Eden, The Italo-Abyssinian Dispute, 29 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 6. Though Abyssinia was far from a resounding success, the popularity Mussolini gained following the introduction of sanctions and his subsequent assistance in the Spanish Civil War demonstrate that he was willing to consider another foreign adventure. 316 Ibid. 317 Eden in a memorandum on Possible Italian designs on Arabia as a result of Italy’s Success in Abyssinia circulated 25 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 3. 318 Gooch details numerous examples of resistance to Italy’s efforts by the ‘young Ethiopians’ after the capture of the Abyssinian capital. J. Gooch, “Re-conquest and Suppression: Fascist Italy's Pacification of Libya and Ethiopia, 1922–39,” Journal of Strategic Studies 28, no. 6, (2005): 1022. 319 R. Mallett, “Fascist Foreign Policy and Official Italian Views of Anthony Eden in the 1930s,” The Historical Journal 43, no. 1 (2000): 158. 47
between Italy and Germany.320 While Eden may, therefore, have overstated the danger of Italian action in spring 1936 there was a risk of an understanding developing in 1936 between the two dictators that could, if Britain pursued firm action against Germany during the Rhineland Crisis, result in Britain engaging in two wars with formidable military powers simultaneously, while continuing to contend with Imperial unrest.
Regardless of their intention, the presence of Italian troops in Northern Africa certainly had a destabilising effect on the local populations. To quash serious unrest in 1919 Britain had deployed five infantry divisions and a cavalry division to Egypt.321 A similar situation in 1936, given Italy’s increased presence in the region and the overall weakness of the British forces would, in Eden’s opinion, be a ‘very serious matter.’322 Baldwin agreed with this assessment.323 Firm action was likely to be seen as repressive, provocative and further evidence of ‘British hostility’ in the region at a time when Britain was already struggling to calm ‘widespread disturbances’ in Palestine, where observers warned that only ‘police and drastic military action [could] hold in check major disorders.’324 Such action would, however, result in ‘permanent embitterment’ throughout the region which would mean such disturbances would ‘certainly’ recur, and possibly spread, in the future.325 William Ormsby-Gore326 reported ‘an average of some twenty to thirty separate attacks’ had occurred per day in July 1936 and warned that these constituted ‘a definite rebellion against the [British] Government.’327 Eden was unsure whether Britain could ‘dispose both the forces necessary’ to preserve order in the region and simultaneously ensure Britain’s domestic and Imperial security.328 The possibility of another Italian move in the Red Sea basin, further destabilising the region, or a ‘possible emergency farther to the East’ made a pragmatic foreign policy essential.329 The Italian action, the threat of German aggression, the risk of Imperial unrest and the constant menace of both Japan and the Soviet Union exposed ‘the disquieting limitations of [Britain’s military] resources.’330 These limitations had been caused
320 Gooch, “Re-conquest and Suppression,” 1022. 321 Eden during a meeting of the Anglo-Egyptian Conversations Committee held 7 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 15. 322 Ibid. 323 Baldwin during a Cabinet meeting to discuss Anglo-Egyptian treaty negotiations on 23 June 1936. CAB 23/84, 14. 324 Eden, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, 8 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 3; Eden in a memorandum on Palestine circulated 11 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 2, 4. 325 Eden, Palestine, 11 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 4. 326 Secretary of State for the Colonies 1936-1938 327 William Ormsby-Gore in a memorandum on Palestine published 4 July 1936. CAB 24/263, 3. 328 Eden, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, 8 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 4. 329 Eden, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, 8 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 4; Eden, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, 8 June 1936. CAB 24/262, 2. 330 Eden, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, 8 June 1936. CAB 24/262, 4. 48
by the socio-economic difficulties of the inter-war years. To pursue an unpopular rearmament programme in the years to 1936 was to oppose the wishes of the people and, potentially, increase the popularity of revolutionary forces within Britain that wished to overthrow her democratic system.
Communist Subversion
According to John Stevenson the Communist movement in Britain in the thirties preached an ‘alien philosophy’ that gained little support and was politically ‘insignificant.’331 Though a ‘Russian Communist Party cell’ was known to be operating in England, its influence was deemed by the Cabinet to be ‘negligible.’ 332 While Britain experienced several serious examples of working-class unrest in the inter-war years, these were an indication of dissatisfaction over the issue of unemployment insurance rather than a desire for Communist revolution. The efforts of British Communist organisations failed to ‘mobilise more than a small fraction of the total number of unemployed’ to their cause during the inter-war years.333 Despite this the British Government were afraid of the threat of Communism both in Britain and internationally. In March 1936 Bolton Eyres-Monsell produced a memorandum warning of the danger of employing ‘untrustworthy,’ i.e. Communist, workers in sensitive positions. 334 In July 1936 Simon warned the Cabinet he had received ‘a great deal of information’ about possible ‘trouble’ encouraged by Communists in South Wales.335 This fear was based on the belief of the Cabinet that though Soviet foreign policy was ‘aggressive,’ expansion would be achieved through ‘intense propaganda and gradually increasing economic pressure’ rather than through military adventure. 336 Though such propaganda had little effect in Britain it could, given the unstable nature of international affairs in the thirties, encourage a Communist uprising abroad that threatened Britain’s interests.
331 J. Stevenson, The Slump: Society and Politics during the Depression (London: Cape, 1978), 142, 215. 332 Joint memorandum by Simon and Eden entitled Proposed Request to German and Italian Governments to Secure the Liquidation of Branches of the National Socialist and Fascist Party Organisations Established in the United Kingdom, 24 July 1936. CAB 23/85, 3. 333 Stevenson, Slump, 190. 334 Eyres-Monsell highlighted ‘eight cases of sabotage’ in three years as evidence that it was ‘urgently necessary’ to act against this ‘source of danger.’ Eyres-Monsell, Employment of Untrustworthy Persons in the Defence Departments, 16 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 2. 335 Simon during a Cabinet debate on National Socialist organisations in Britain held 29 July 1936. CAB 23/85. 23. 336 R. Vansittart, An Aspect of International Relations, May 1931, CAB 24/225, 22; George Milne, Military Appreciation of the Situation in Europe, March 1931, 31 March 1931. CAB 24/220, 30. 49
In the thirties the Soviet Union was deemed the ‘greatest threat to the peace of the world.’ 337 The spread of Communism was perceived as an underlying danger during each of the crises of that affected Britain during the thirties. During the Manchurian Crisis the British noted a ‘formidable Communist movement’ in China and were wary of the Soviet Union’s intentions in the country. 338 While the Japanese action concerned the British, increased Japanese influence in Manchuria was deemed ‘less inimical to the British Empire’ than ‘the inevitable alternative – an increase of Soviet influence.’ 339 Germany readily exploited Britain’s fear of Soviet expansion during the thirties by highlighting her role as a ‘bulwark’ against Communism and the ‘peril’ of Soviet expansion to ‘Germany and Europe generally.’340 The ‘Russian bogey’ was, in Phipps’ opinion, ‘a useful card to play’ to justify Germany’s actions in the thirties.341 Though Robert Vansittart wrote in 1933 that ‘German Communism has never seemed a menace to any observer who knows the German character,’ the evidence of Spartacus Week and the number of votes attracted to the German Communist Party during the 1932 Election suggested otherwise.342 During the Abyssinian Crisis Britain feared that if she defeated Italy in a war in the Mediterranean Mussolini’s prestige would be so severely damaged that Fascism would collapse and be replaced by Communism.343 In the Empire Communist expansion was apprehended by the Cabinet. Throughout the inter-war period the Soviets maintained a ‘bitter and professed hostility’ to the British Empire while the Cabinet believed that India represented a ‘major objective’ in Soviet foreign policy. 344 Communism was deemed ‘diametrically opposed’ to Britain’s interests, and therefore the Soviet Union was a ‘potential enemy to the British Empire.’345 During the Rhineland Crisis Britain was therefore unable to consider the Soviet Union as a potential ally because of the latter’s Communist ideology and the belief that closer ties between the two would ‘drive Hitler into an attitude of outright hostility to Britain’ and possibly a German-Japanese alliance that would have ‘immediate and disagreeable reactions on British policy both in
337 George Milne, Military Appreciation of the Situation in Europe, 31 March 1931. CAB 24/220. 29. 338 Report by the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee, Situation in the Far East, circulated 22 February 1932. CAB 24/229. 21. 339 George Milne, Military Appreciation of the Present World Situation, 28 October 1932. CAB 24/234, 6. 340 Hermann Göring, “Aufbau Einer Nation,” in Fascism, ed. R. Griffin, 133 (Oxford: University Press, 1995); Phipps in a despatch to Simon, 6 April 1935. CAB 24/259, 28. 341 Phipps to Simon, 6 April 1935. CAB 24/259, 28. 342 Vansittart in a memorandum on The Present and Future Position in Europe, 30 August 1933. CAB 24/243, 5. 343 Eric Drummond, 10 October 1935, DBFP, Second Series Volume XV, 77. 344 Memorandum by Laming Worthington-Evans on Army Estimates circulated 20 January 1922. CAB 24/132, 3; George Milne, Military Appreciation of the Present World Situation, 28 October 1932. CAB 24/234, 6. 345 Report by the Joint Planning Sub-Committee, 21 July 1936. 13. 50
346 Europe and the Far East.’ Without the armed forces required to meet this complicated web of threats Britain was left with little option but to adopt a pragmatic foreign policy based on diplomatic, not military, solutions to international disputes to allow time for her rearmament programme to blossom.
Conclusion
In the twenties and thirties the principal goal of Britain’s foreign policy was to avoid involvement in another major conflict. Despite the growing need to reinforce the Empire, Treasury control ensured military spending was adjusted according to ‘the country’s serious financial and economic situation’ as a complete rearmament programme was ‘well beyond the industrial and financial capacity of the country’ in the early thirties.347 Samuel Hoare claims that if Britain had in 1933 ‘realized the complete change that had come over Europe after Hitler’s advent to power’ and rearmed immediately the Second World War would have been avoided.348 Due to the prevalence of pacifism and poverty in Britain in the years to 1936 such rearmament was, however, impossible. For the British Cabinet in the inter-war years there was ‘only a choice of evils:’ whether to remain under-strength despite the increasingly dangerous international situation or to rearm and risk financial catastrophe. 349 After March 1936 the British Treasury began to yield; ‘industrial capacity,’ not finance, became the ‘limiting factor’ to Britain’s rearmament programme. 350 Though it has been argued that Britain’s Service Chiefs misled the Cabinet in their intelligence reports about the dangers of the thirties, in 1936 Italy and Germany provided substantial assistance to the Nationalists during the Spanish Civil War and during the Second World War Germany, Japan and Italy aligned themselves against the British. The threat of powers combining was, therefore, real. If world peace could be secured through the negotiated settlement of international disputes such threatening combinations could be avoided and the British Government could continue to overlook the needs of the armed forces to concentrate on the restoration of her economic strength. Peace for Britain was, in the thirties, a ‘national interest’ that could not be guaranteed by strength and instead had to be sought through collective security, negotiation
346 Newman, Origins of Munich, 381; Minute by Sargent 1 April 1935. DBFP Second Series Volume XII, 794. 347 Conclusions from the 23 March 1932 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/70, 9; Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 100. 348 Templewood, Nine Troubled Years, 332. 349 Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 105. 350 Though, as has been shown, the limitations of industrial capacity were almost as great as those of finance before them. Peden, Dreadnoughts, 153. 51 or acquiescence.351 That Britain consistently sought to settle the international crises of the thirties through non-military methods can be explained by her financial weakness, the belief that, as in Manchuria and Abyssinia, her potential allies would prove unreliable and the danger of Britain herself becoming involved in a war her with under-strength military forces. To summarise: the result of Britain’s inter-war social, economic and diplomatic difficulties was that in 1936 Britain’s military forces were too weak to guarantee the security of her homeland and Empire or oppose acts of international aggression, while her public was generally opposed to either rearmament or a foreign policy based on military sanctions. The extent to which these factors influenced the Cabinet during the Rhineland Crisis will now be considered.
351 Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy, 19. 52
CHAPTER III: NEITHER THE MEANS NOR THE HEART
The third chapter of this work will focus primarily on the Cabinet record of the Rhineland Crisis. By referring to the minutes of numerous Cabinet meetings between March and June 1936, or from the initial stages of the crisis to the failure of Eden’s questionnaire to Germany, and various memoranda from the period the views and fears of the Cabinet during the Rhineland Crisis will be detailed. Later minutes and memoranda will also be quoted to assess the validity of these earlier sources. While the context provided by the preceding chapters is absent from the revisionist view of the Rhineland Crisis, this third chapter will provide the in- depth analysis of the Cabinet’s handling of the Rhineland Crisis that is missing from the traditional interpretation. By marrying these omissions from the two distinct strands of the historiography of the Rhineland Crisis I will argue that inaction was the correct reaction to the remilitarization of the Rhineland and show that social, economic, military and diplomatic considerations heavily influenced the Cabinet’s response to the crisis.
In a bizarre coincidence the British Cabinet discussed their likely attitude to a German move into the Rhineland on 5 March 1936, the same day that Hitler fixed 7 March as the date to remilitarize the Rhineland.352 The Cabinet even anticipated the pretence for Germany’s move.353 Ignorance of the imminence of Germany’s move allowed the Cabinet to evaluate the merits of both action and inaction to a unilateral German move into the Rhineland. Eden correctly assumed that ‘the French Government would not proceed to isolated action’ in the event of a German occupation of the Rhineland.354 France, the Cabinet prophesised, would follow Britain’s lead. Eden suggested that Britain, rather than allow Germany to take the initiative, should at once begin negotiations with Hitler to remove the demilitarization clauses relating to the Rhineland. 355 During the 5 March meeting it was admitted by Baldwin, Chamberlain and ‘several others’ in the Cabinet that Britain, like France, was not ‘really in a position to take effective military action against Germany in the event of a violation of the Treaty of Locarno.’356 To secure a negotiated settlement would satisfy a legitimate German
352 Werner von Blomberg issued preparatory orders to the German Chiefs of Staff on 2 March, while the final date was set on 5 March. DGFP Series C Vol. IV, 1218. 353 The view was expressed in the Cabinet on 5 March 1936 that Germany would ‘denounce the Locarno Treaty on the ground that it was incompatible with the Franco-Russian Treaty.’ CAB 23/83, 11. 354 Eden, ibid., 8. 355 Ibid., 14. 356 General view, ibid., 13. 53
grievance, improve European relations and, potentially, secure the limitation on aerial armaments in Europe that Britain so desperately sought. The events of 7 March did not change the Cabinet’s view that negotiation was the correct solution to the crisis. What is surprising is that the British War Office believed that the remilitarization of the Rhineland could increase Britain’s security. If the Rhineland was ‘on both sides so strongly fortified that invasion from either side became unlikely’ the risk of war in Europe could be reduced.357 While the Cabinet appreciated the potential danger of seeking to negotiate with an untrustworthy Germany, and ‘deplored’ the unilateral nature of the German action, Britain’s military weakness during a period of dangerous global threats left her with little option but to attempt to resolve the Rhineland Crisis peacefully and ensure she did not become involved in a war for which her public, economy and military were unprepared.358
The social factors explained in chapter one heavily influenced the Cabinet’s reaction to the remilitarization of the Rhineland. During the 5 March meeting the Cabinet concluded that a British military response to the crisis was ‘not feasible’ due to the ‘state of [her] public opinion.’ 359 On 11 March the Cabinet was reminded that ‘public opinion was strongly opposed to any military action against the Germans in the demilitarized zone.’ 360 This assertion was again repeated during the 18 March Cabinet meeting. 361 Even military conversations between Britain and the other Locarno Powers to discuss Germany’s move were unpopular among the Cabinet; such meetings were thought to be ‘very unacceptable’ to public opinion due to their concern that Britain would become committed to involvement in another war.362 On 11 March the Cabinet concluded that ‘many people, perhaps most people, were saying that they did not see why the Germans should not reoccupy the Rhineland.’363 ‘Wide circles’ of public opinion in Britain argued that as Germany had been granted equality of status she could not be prevented from remilitarizing the Rhineland.364 At the 11 March meeting Baldwin also admitted that the mood of the public had hindered Britain’s rearmament. 365 Following the failure of the World Disarmament Conference the Cabinet began to plan Britain’s rearmament programme. The years between the Disarmament Conference and the remilitarization of the Rhineland were, however, effectively wasted as it
357 War Office memorandum, Note on Rhineland Demilitarized Zone, 26 March 1936. WO 190/409. 358 Eden, Germany and the Locarno Treaty, 8 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 3. 359 Minutes from the 5 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 15. 360 Minutes from the 11 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 10. 361 Minutes from the 18 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 13. 362 Ibid. 363 Minutes from the 11 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 11. 364 Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff, German diplomat, quoted from TMWC Vol. XVII, 130. 365 Baldwin during the 11 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 14. 54
took a ‘good deal of time to educate public opinion’ that rearmament was necessary.366 The lack of progress made in this period meant that in March 1936 Britain was ‘caught at a disadvantage.’367 While the British public were ‘waking up to the dangers of the international situation,’ ‘pacifist agitation’ was still rife in 1936.368 The public simply ‘did not favour the idea of [Britain] sending an Army to the continent’ and preferred a defence policy based on ‘limited liability.’ 369 This was attributed by Duff Cooper to ‘the prevalent apathy of the public in general towards the Army’ caused by pacifism.370 In late March 1936 Eden warned the Cabinet that the public was anxious about the international situation and needed to be ‘reassured...that there was no risk of [Britain] being drawn into war’ over the Rhineland.371 Dieckhoff noted ‘relief’ among the British public that the thorny Rhineland issue had been resolved ‘so quickly and comparatively painlessly.’372 The public, the Cabinet believed, was unwilling to ‘honour any commitments unless they were vital to [Britain’s] security.’373 The public believed that the remilitarization of the zone ‘was no threat to France’ and therefore not a threat to Britain’s vital interests.374 Germany was understood as the ‘white sheep’ rather than the ‘black sheep’ in March 1936.375 A new treaty with Germany, based on Locarno, despite Germany’s questionable fidelity to such treaties, was ‘popular’ among the public.376 Conversely, a military response to the German move would be an unpopular policy which, if combined with the imminent restoration of the UAB, could force the resignation of the Baldwin Government.
During the Rhineland Crisis another aspect of the social legacy of the First World War, unemployment, again became an issue. The standstill agreement relating to the UAB was due to expire and the new regulations of the board were, ‘next to foreign policy,’ the subject which ‘excited the greatest popular interest’ in mid-1936. 377 The public outcry following the shameful Hoare-Laval Pact had forced the Government to continue its support of sanctions during the Abyssinian Crisis. There was, therefore, a precedent for public
366 Ibid. 367 Ibid. 368 Duff Cooper, Recruiting for the Army, 2 April 1936. CAB 24/261, 3. 369 That is, a defence policy that relied on a substantial air force and limited land forces. Duff Cooper during a Cabinet meeting held 22 December 1937. CAB 23/90A, 4. 370 Duff Cooper, Recruiting for the Army, 2 April 1936. CAB 24/261, 3. 371 Eden during the 25 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 10. 372 Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff, German diplomat, quoted from TMWC Vol. XVII, 130. 373 Minutes from the 29 April 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/84, 19. 374 Minutes from the 25 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 11. 375 Ibid. 376 Duff Cooper during the 30 April 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/84, 13. 377 Ormsby-Gore during a Cabinet meeting held 25 June 1936. CAB 23/84, 8. 55
opinion influencing foreign policy. As has been stated, the public’s previous response to the UAB had ‘forced’ the Government into an embarrassing volte-face.378 The situation in 1936, when the standstill agreement reached in 1934 was due to expire, was one of ‘extreme gravity’ which, if improperly handled, could produce ‘far-reaching and disastrous consequences.’379 Godfrey Collins warned that the termination of the standstill agreement would result in an ‘alarmingly large’ number of benefit cuts.380 Such cuts were likely to produce a ‘very unpleasant political situation.’ 381 There was a risk of ‘widespread disturbances and possibly rioting.’382 Thomas Inskip and Chamberlain agreed that ‘trouble was inevitable.’383 Given the unpopularity of a war over the Rhineland and the probable public response to the new UAB rates the British Government was faced with a serious situation in 1936. The public had reacted angrily against the Government in 1919, 1920, 1931 and 1934 over social issues and in 1935 over foreign policy; there was a risk of unrest in 1936 greater in magnitude than any of these previous examples due to the combination of unpopular social and foreign policies. After the events of 7 March 1936 Britain’s Members of Parliament found that their constituents had ‘no intention of again going to war without reason for the sake of France.’384 The British public, though willing to fight for France ‘in the event of a German incursion into French territory,’ did not ‘care two-hoots about Germans reoccupying their own territory.’385 While the German danger was appreciated by the public in early 1936 they would, in the opinion of Eden, ‘not merely accept a vast rearmament programme’ and would instead desire ‘an effort to come to terms with Germany.’386
Chamberlain steeled the Government to press on with the new UAB rates. He warned that the benefits prescribed by the new Board regulations were ‘if anything on too generous a scale.’387 The rates involved, in Chamberlain’s opinion, raised benefits ‘very near the danger level.’388 The Treasury would only be able to continue maintaining the unemployed at the new rate and rearm while trade expanded and ‘the country as a whole continued to enjoy
378 Oliver Stanley during the 25 June 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/84, 3. 379 Ibid. 380 Godfrey Collins, Note on the Report of the Committee on Regulations of the Unemployment Assistance Board, 23 June 1936. CAB 24/263, 3. 381 Ibid., 2. 382 Stanley during the 25 June 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/84, 3. 383 Minutes of the 25 June 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/84, 14. 384 Hoesch in a telegram to the German Foreign Ministry received 24 March 1936. DGFP, Series C, Vol. V, 237. 385 Alfred Duff Cooper’s view, reported on 9 March 1936 by Joachim von Ribbentrop to the German Foreign Ministry following a conversation between the two. Ibid., 57. 386 Memorandum by Eden on Britain’s policy towards Germany circulated 11February 1936. DBFP Second Series Vol. XV, 642. 387 Neville Chamberlain from the minutes of the 25 June 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/84, 7. 388 Ibid. 56
prosperity.’389 Chamberlain warned, however, that such conditions ‘could not last forever.’390 If Britain’s trade declined she would again be faced with the prospect of ‘another crisis like that of 1931, another Economy Committee and the necessity of making cuts of a heavy and widespread character involving serious hardships on classes and individuals.’ 391 This scenario was likewise apprehended by the Trade Unions. Brown warned, somewhat curiously, that the Trade Unions were considering their ‘probable position’ after the rearmament programme was completed. It was feared by the Unions that many of those absorbed into the armaments industry would eventually be made ‘redundant and will find themselves condemned to unemployment for an indeterminate period.’392 Britain’s industry and Treasury were, therefore, clearly anxious of the possible future economic dangers of rearmament and believed that a rapid, unlimited programme could eventually cause unemployment and national finance issues as serious as those experienced in the twenties. If a negotiated settlement to the Rhineland Crisis could be secured Britain’s rearmament programme could be scaled back which would lower the economic and industrial damage caused by prioritising rearmament at the expense of production for export or the domestic market.
Britain’s rearmament programme, announced in March 1936, promised five cruisers and four new infantry battalions. In previous years ‘finance had been the governing reason’ for the decline of these two services.393 Published four days before the remilitarization of the Rhineland the British Government’s 1936 Defence White Paper concluded with a promise that Treasury control would be ‘maintained throughout the whole programme.’ 394 The Government’s new rearmament programme would ‘be carried out without restrictions on the programmes of social services’ while ensuring progress in the ‘the general industry and trade of the country [was] maintained.’395 While these conclusions were made before 7 March, the German move did little to modify the position of the Cabinet. On 26 March Ernest Brown repeated the warning that rearmament had to be ‘carried out without interference with, or reduction of, production for the ordinary civil and export trade.’396 Brown warned that a rearmament programme ‘of the magnitude contemplated’ could not be undertaken without a
389 Ibid., 8. 390 Ibid. 391 Ibid., 9. 392 Ernest Brown in a memorandum on the Defence Programme – Labour Issues Involved circulated 26 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 10. 393 Chamberlain during the 9 October 1935 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/82, 18. 394 Statement relating to Defence, 3 March 1936. CAB 24/260, 19. 395 Minutes of the 2 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 6. 396 Brown, Defence Programme – Labour Issues Involved, 26 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 3. 57
‘diminution in the civil and export trade.’397 This, in Brown’s opinion, ‘must not be allowed to occur.’398 As had been shown by the First World War once ‘the element of goodwill in [Britain’s] export trade had been sacrificed’ Britain encountered a ‘very difficult economic and financial situation.’399 The seriousness of a decline in trade would be worsened by the rearmament programme. As ‘the permanent cost of maintaining [her] armaments would have greatly increased,’ Britain would be faced with a situation similar to that of the early twenties; decreased exports at a time of increasing unemployment and heavy military expenditure.400 Even the limited rearmament programme adopted in early 1936 taxed the capabilities of Britain’s industries. A month after its inception Inskip warned that ‘he might have to ask [the Cabinet] for authority to adopt more drastic measures’ which would force producers to prioritise rearmament.401 The Committee of Imperial Defence acknowledged that the effect of this on Britain’s trade would be ‘considerable’ and that there ‘would almost certainly be an immediate falling off of exports.’ 402 Estimating the financial impact of rearmament in July 1937 Chamberlain warned that, though he had not yet calculated the final cost of rearmament, and there was a possibility of substantial ‘additions to the programme,’ he was in possession of ‘sufficient particulars’ that showed the annual cost of Britain’s restored armed forces would be ‘a permanent financial burden which was altogether beyond what [Britain] could find from revenue.’403 The Chancellor of the Exchequer had warned the Cabinet that the rearmament programme contemplated by the Government was beyond the financial capacity of the country. The Minister of Labour had warned the Cabinet that the programme was beyond the industrial capacity of the country. To negotiate with Germany was to lessen the need for a rapid rearmament programme which Britain could not afford without causing herself serious financial injury. Another potential solution to the crisis, the introduction of non-military sanctions against Germany, was equally likely to have a negative effect on the British Treasury.
397 Ibid., 4. 398 Ibid. 399 Neville Chamberlain during a Cabinet debate on the national balance of payments held 20 January 1937. CAB 23/87, 18. 400 Chamberlain during the 20 January 1937 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/87, 18. The legacy of the First World War is clear in their thoughts; at the end of the war domestic demand collapsed while Britain had lost her former export markets. A similar situation could, therefore, be expected following the completion of the rearmament programme. 401 Inskip during the 29 April 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/84, 20. 402 Report of the Committee of Imperial Defence on War Office Production circulated 19 June 1936. CAB 24/263, 7. 403 Chamberlain during a Cabinet debate on defence expenditure held 29 July 1937. CAB 23/89, 36. 58
The effectiveness of imposing financial or economic sanctions on Germany following her action in the Rhineland was investigated by the Cabinet in 1936. It was argued that sanctions were ‘bound before long to bring about a financial crash’ which would force Germany to ‘come to terms or to fight.’404 The Committee concluded, however, that such a policy would not be effective in forcing Germany to negotiate. While the measures taken against Italy were legally enforceable under the Covenant of the League of Nations, the introduction of sanctions against Germany was not. The remilitarization of the Rhineland had not resulted in war and the members of the League were therefore ‘under no obligation’ to impose sanctions and were free to ‘accept or reject as they see fit’ any recommendation made by the Council of the League of Nations.405 In March 1936 Italy was herself the subject of sanctions imposed by the League of Nations and was therefore unlikely to join her Locarno partners. The Cabinet believed, therefore, that only France, Belgium and Britain would implement sanctions.406 Such limited sanctions would be ‘provocative without being effective.’407As Germany was ‘the third most important market in the world’ the negative economic effect on sanctioning countries would be far greater than had been experienced during the Abyssinian Crisis.408 Britain especially would suffer collateral damage. German businesses owed British financial houses around £40,000,000. Interest was regularly paid by the debtors. If sanctions were introduced it was feared by the British that these ‘remittances would cease to be made.’409 The British creditors would remain liable for the debts and a ‘number of them would almost certainly be faced with insolvency’ without Government intervention.410 Such intervention would ‘impair confidence and lead to great financial difficulties and provoke [the] withdrawal of capital from London and a drain on Sterling.’411 The effect on Britain of sanctions intended to punish Germany would, therefore, ‘be very serious.’412 Worse, it was feared by the Cabinet that economic or financial sanctions ‘would provoke a military attack by Germany.’413 Sanctions, therefore, risked either serious financial harm to Britain or war with Germany while Britain was economically and militarily vulnerable and faced other
404 Suggestion made during the 11 March Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 12. 405 Conclusion of the Committee of Imperial Defence’s Sub-Committee on Economic Pressure, Economic Pressure on Germany without there being a State of War: Possible Action by the League, circulated 19 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 6. 406 Minutes of the 8 April 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 6. 407 Ibid., 7. 408 Economic Pressure on Germany without there being a State of War: Possible Action by the League, 9. 409 Ibid., 18. 410 Ibid. 411 Ibid., 19. 412 Ibid. 413 Minutes of the 19 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 11. 59
serious threats. Eden and Halifax agreed that ‘in these circumstances’ it was worth ‘taking almost any risk in order to escape’ from the possibility of war even if, as a result of inaction in 1936, Britain would be faced with a far more formidable Germany in the future.414
Britain had in early March seriously considered instigating negotiations which would have ‘culminated in authorizing reoccupation [of the Rhineland] by Germany.’415 Even after the event Eden believed that, due to the ‘grave condition’ of international affairs, ‘no opportunity must be missed which offers any hope of amelioration.’416 The action of 7 March had not ‘produced a result, so far as the demilitarized zone itself [was] concerned, which [Britain was] not prepared ultimately to contemplate.’417 Due to Germany’s ‘material strength and power of mischief in Europe’ it was in Britain’s best interest to ‘conclude with [Germany] as far-reaching and enduring [a] settlement as possible whilst Herr Hitler is still in the mood to do so.’418 The forthcoming Olympic Games were of vital importance to the Nazi regime. They could be used to reassure world opinion that Germany was a peaceful nation and calm fears of Germany’s future intentions. Hitler, it was believed, was likely to become ‘more difficult to deal with’ after the Games. 419 There seemed fertile ground for a new agreement if negotiations were begun immediately. Though one of the ‘main foundations of the peace of Western Europe’ had been ‘cut away,’ Eden believed that the Locarno Powers shared a ‘manifest duty to rebuild.’420 While Britain was willing to admit to the French that the German action had ‘introduced a new disturbing element into the international situation’ which posed a ‘threat to European security’ Britain’s attitude throughout the crisis was ‘governed by the desire to utilise Herr Hitler’s offers in order to obtain a permanent settlement’ in Western Europe.421 The alternative to this was, in the opinion of the Cabinet, war.
In the days following the Rhineland Crisis the British Government received intelligence that warned that though the Wehrmacht was still under-strength, it could ‘nevertheless offer a very determined resistance’ to efforts to remove it from the
414 Eden and Halifax during the 11 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 4, 11. 415 Eden in a memorandum on Germany and the Locarno Treaty circulated 8 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 2. 416 Eden in a statement prepared for the House of Commons on the situation created by the German action approved by the Cabinet on 9 March 1936. CAB 23/83, 23. 417 Eden in a memorandum on Germany and the Locarno Treaty published 8 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 3. 418 Ibid., 5. 419 Eden during the 1 July 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/85, 14. 420 Eden during the 9 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 23. 421 Eden in a memorandum entitled Germany and the Locarno Treaty circulated to the Cabinet c. 19 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 3; Eden during a Cabinet meeting to discuss Germany, the demilitarized zone and the situation created by the German action held 16 March 1936. CAB 23/83, 3. 60
Rhineland. 422 The German General Staff, who had opposed Hitler’s march into the Rhineland, anticipated that the French would demand Germany’s withdrawal and would support a war to maintain their forces in the previously demilitarized zone.423 Phipps further warned that Germany had ‘for many years’ prepared plans to ensure the defence of the Rhineland ‘by means other than by regular troops.’424 Germany’s paramilitary forces were ‘prepared to make demolitions and to resist an invasion’ in the event of a British, French or Belgian march into the zone.425 British War Office papers extensively discussed the content of these plans in November 1934.426 The advice of Britain’s senior diplomat in Berlin and the War Office was that Germany possessed the means and the heart to resist, by force, any effort to remove German troops from the Rhineland. Hitler himself claimed on 11 March that he would ‘never’ withdraw from the Rhineland.427 Phipps supported this statement by informing the Foreign Office that in his opinion ‘if as a consequence of sanctions or similar measures the water rises to Herr Hitler’s neck [he would] take the plunge into war rather than submit tamely to be drowned.’ 428 Alfred Duff Cooper, however, argued that by not confronting Hitler in 1936 Britain would, because of the rate of German rearmament, ‘not...be in a better position’ in the future.429 Though other members of the Cabinet appreciated this, Baldwin warned that Britain could not risk war during the Rhineland Crisis because of the ‘embarrassments’ of her armed forces.430
The limitations of Britain’s armed forces in the years to the Rhineland Crisis have been explained above. The British Cabinet were acutely aware of their weak military position. Britain was simply ‘not in a position in a military sense’ to pursue the firm policy advocated by the French.431 Eden warned that it was in Britain’s best interests to ‘prevent any
422 Phipps to Eden, 11 March 1936. DBFP Second Series, Vol. XVI, 91-92. 423 Colonel F. E. Hotblack, British Military Attaché in Britain’s Embassy in Berlin, reported a conversation he had had with ‘a German General Staff Officer’ to Phipps who telegraphed it to Eden on 9 March 1936. DBFP, Second Series, Volume XVI, 70. 424 Phipps to Eden, 11 March 1936. Ibid., 92. 425 Ibid. 426 A War Office report noted that plans detailing tactics to be used by the German paramilitary forces such as destroying roads and bridges to delay a foreign invader while the Wehrmacht mobilised had been produced in early 1934. Views of the Military Attaché [in] Berlin on probable German Strategy in Future War: Summary of Information Regarding Recent Developments in Germany, 26 November 1934. WO 190 / 283. 427 Phipps reporting an interview held between George Ward Price and Hitler to Eden received 11 March 1936. DBFP Second Series Vol. XVI, 92. 428 Phipps, 11 March 1936. DBFP Second Series Vol. XVI, 90. 429 Duff Cooper during the 11 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 12. 430 Baldwin, ibid., 14. 431 Baldwin during the 5 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 15. 61
military action by France against Germany.’432 If France had acted against Germany Britain could have been committed to a war in Europe with her meagre forces which had been ‘exhausted’ by their deployment in the Mediterranean.433 The Chiefs of Staff advised against a military response in March 1936 due to the serious weakness of Britain’s armed forces. As a result of the Abyssinian Crisis, and Italy’s perceived menace to Egypt, Duff Cooper warned that the position of the British Army would be ‘worse than ever’ if she were forced to dispatch troops to the Rhineland.434 Eyres-Monsell advised that the British Navy possessed only three ships capable of opposing the German pocket battleships; two of these were stationed in Abyssinia while the third was undergoing modernisation in Britain.435 Cunliffe- Lister informed the Cabinet that ‘with so many aircraft and airmen in Egypt’ the position of the Royal Air Force was ‘deplorable’ and that it would be ‘difficult to imagine a worse situation’ in the event of Britain intervening in the Rhineland.436 Due to the ‘scantiness’ of her armed forces Britain’s leaders sought a diplomatic solution to the Rhineland Crisis.437 While Britain was committed to the possibility of war in the Mediterranean her domestic defences were ‘very weak.’438 In the event of a war in the Rhineland in 1936 the Chiefs of Staff warned that Britain would be ‘committed to participation with forces which are not only inadequate to render effective support, but incapable of assuring [Britain’s] security.’439 The Chiefs of Staff further warned that ‘any question of war with Germany’ while Britain faced the combined threats posed by Italy, Japan and Imperial unrest and was uncertain of the intentions of the Soviet Union was ‘thoroughly dangerous.’440 To meet these varied threats Britain required time to rearm, but a programme of the magnitude required to remedy Britain’s military deficiencies before 1939 would have a serious impact on her economic recovery.
The belief of the Cabinet that Germany was prepared to resort to war to maintain the changed status of the Rhineland combined with the various international crises of the thirties
432 The word ‘prevent’ was altered in a later draft to ‘discourage.’ Eden, Germany and the Locarno Treaty, 8 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 6. 433 Memorandum produced by the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee on the Condition of our Forces to meet the Possibility of War with Germany on 12 March. CAB 24/261, 10. 434 Duff Cooper during a Cabinet meeting held 16 March 1936. CAB 23/83, 19. 435 Eyres-Monsell, ibid. 436 Swinton, ibid. 437 Minutes from the 19 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 11. 438 Inskip during a Cabinet meeting held 1 April 1936. CAB 23/83, 7. 439 Draft minutes of a meeting of the Committee of Imperial Defence on Staff Conversations with the Locarno Powers, 6 April 1936. CAB 24/261, 8. 440 Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, Condition of our Forces to meet the possibility of War with Germany, 12 March 1936. CAB 24/261, 9. 62
to greatly influence Britain’s response to the Rhineland Crisis. War with Germany, while Britain was weak could, given the uncertainties surrounding Japan, Italy and Russia, encourage a move against the British Empire. Worse, if France, with the assistance of Russia, was successful in defeating Germany in a war over the Rhineland, the result of a war in March 1936 would ‘probably’ be Germany ‘going Bolshevik.’441 The dangers to Britain of a Communist Germany are obvious. Eden reminded the Cabinet that, while France was only concerned with Germany, Britain was ‘compelled’ to react to both Italian and German machinations in 1936. 442 In light of the threats posed by Italy, Germany and Japan simultaneously and the constant danger of Soviet expansion, Eden presented a radical suggestion to the Cabinet: détente between Britain and Germany.443 If successful this move would substantially reduce the possibility of a German-Italian understanding. While the Abyssinian Crisis was near its conclusion there still existed suspicion in Britain over Mussolini’s future intentions. Over 400,000 Italian troops were concentrated in North-East Africa.444 It was ‘by no means impossible’ for Italian propaganda to encourage open revolt in Egypt which would seriously threaten Britain’s dominance over the Suez Canal and therefore the security of the entire Empire.445 As has been stated, a firm British response to Egyptian unrest would encourage similar disturbances throughout the region which Italy could, given the size of her force in Africa, easily exploit. To secure more cordial relations with Germany through a negotiated settlement to the Rhineland Crisis was to both calm the tense European theatre and prevent the danger of closer ties between Italy and Germany.
Mussolini had long suspected Hitler’s intentions in Austria. The conflicting plans of the two dictators in Central Europe seemed to prevent them acting in concert, but – by May 1936 – it seemed possible to Eden that the two dictators could reach a ‘compromise’ so that they could ‘gain their larger objectives elsewhere.’446 Though Eden was perhaps mistaken in apprehending such a scenario at this time, he was not alone in the Cabinet in fearing closer ties between the dictators. Halifax warned of the ‘grave danger of a Hitler-Mussolini rapprochement’ while Philip Cunliffe-Lister concluded that preventing this union was a ‘principal object’ of Britain’s foreign policy.447 Inskip agreed with these views and suggested that without closer ties with either Italy or Germany Britain was exposed to the danger of ‘a
441 Baldwin during the 11 March 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 11. 442 Eden during the 29 April 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/84, 17. 443 Ibid., 18. 444 Ibid., 17. 445 Eden in a memorandum on Anglo-Egyptian Conversations circulated 1 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 5. 446 Eden, The International Situation, 16 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 20. 447 Halifax and Swinton during a Cabinet meeting held 29 May 1936. CAB 23/84, 12. 63
possible conflict with Germany, a possible war with Italy and possibly with Japan’ at the same time.448 Eden obviously appreciated the dangers of the international situation in 1936 and warned of the threat to the Empire posed by Italy following her victory in Abyssinia. Eden warned that Italy’s presence, together with the situation in Palestine, had caused an ‘unfavourable reaction’ to Britain throughout the Near East. 449 Britain’s concerns were further increased by the ‘aggressive militarism of Japan and the growing likelihood of untoward developments in Europe’ caused by Germany. 450 Eden summarised the British position in 1936 in a single sentence: ‘with [her] present military resources [Britain] obviously cannot afford to have difficulties everywhere.’451 Following the remilitarization of the Rhineland this was exactly the situation which confronted the Cabinet. Mussolini was perceived as wild and irrational while Eden found it ‘not possible to feel confident that another move by Germany will not take place in the near future.’452 Eden warned that an aggressive move was likely from Japan ‘in the event of [war with Italy or Germany] materialising.’453 The Soviet Union remained an enigma. So serious was the situation that Eden recommended that Baldwin approach the heads of the British press and inform them that ‘the next few months might be decisive’ and urge them to remain moderate so as to ‘take no action which might make matters worse.’454 If the dangers posed by Italy, Germany and Japan matured simultaneously, if the Soviet Union moved into India or if the British were unable to maintain their position in the Near East due to an Arab revolt, the situation facing the British Government would be ‘definitely untenable.’ 455 Negotiation, not war, was, in these circumstances, the correct response to the Rhineland Crisis.
Conclusion
Through this thorough investigation into the Cabinet record the traditional analysis of the Rhineland Crisis has been undermined. The Cabinet was aware, as claimed by the revisionist writers, that a firm response to the crisis would lead to war. What is also obvious from these archival sources is the extent to which social, economic, military and diplomatic concerns
448 Inskip, Ibid., 15. 449 Eden, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, 8 June 1936. CAB 24/262, 2. 450 Ibid. 451 Ibid. 452 Drummond warned that it was ‘not inconceivable’ that Mussolini would, ‘knowing his military and air strength’ in the Mediterranean, attack the British forces in the region. Eden in a memorandum on The Italo- Abyssinian Dispute, produced 20 May 1936. CAB 24/262, 6. 453 Eden, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, 8 June 1936. CAB 24/262, 2. 454 Eden during the 6 July 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/85, 12. 455 Eden, Anglo-Egyptian Treaty Negotiations, 8 June 1936. CAB 24/262, 3. 64
influenced the Cabinet’s response to the German move. It is clear that the socio-economic impact of the First World War had a profound effect on Britain’s inter-war military policy and that the numerous global crises of the thirties were prominent in the thoughts of the Cabinet members during the Rhineland Crisis. The Cabinet concluded that the principal objects of Britain’s foreign policy during the crisis were ‘first to secure peace in the world if possible and second to keep [Britain] out of war.’456 It was admitted that if Britain had been ‘stronger’ and her public ‘better instructed’ it might have been possible for her to rearm earlier and ‘guarantee peace in Europe.’457 It is clear from the above account of Britain’s inter-war socio-economic situation that substantial rearmament was practically impossible in the years to the Rhineland Crisis. In 1936 Britain’s ‘defensive arrangements were inadequate’ and her public ‘would not support’ British involvement in another war in Europe.458 The Cabinet was aware of the risks of inaction; it was admitted that Britain’s policy of ‘yielding to Germany’ over the Rhineland would ‘merely encourage Herr Hitler to pursue his aggressive policy’ and that ‘every surrender brought [Britain] closer to war.’459 There was support for informing Hitler ‘that there was a definite limit beyond which [Britain] could not allow him to go.’460 The Cabinet concluded, however, that in 1936 Britain had ‘neither the means nor the heart to stop him.’461 These statements show that the Cabinet was aware that inaction over the Rhineland was likely to merely delay a conflict with Hitler until a later date when Germany’s armed forces would be even more formidable. They also show that the British Cabinet was aware of the unpopularity of a war in 1936 among the general public, recognised the inadequacies of her armed forces for war with Germany and appreciated the need for rearmament. Finally, the British Government believed that Germany was willing to resort to war over the Rhineland. The British Cabinet in March 1936 was, therefore, far more aware of the implications of inaction than later commentators seem to appreciate. They understood the potential social, economic, military and diplomatic implications of both action and inaction and sought, through negotiation, to reach a lasting agreement with Germany or at least secure more time for the completion of a rearmament programme which, it was hoped, would deter future German, Italian and Japanese intrigues and prevent the outbreak of a second world war.
456 Minutes from the 6 July 1936 Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/85, 21. 457 Ibid. 458 Ibid. 459 Ibid., 21, 23. 460 Ibid., 23. 461 Ibid. 65
CHAPTER IV: REVISING THE TRADITION.
This thesis has outlined the weaknesses of both the traditional and revisionist interpretations of the Rhineland Crisis. The traditional view of the Rhineland Crisis has tended to assume that Germany would retreat from the Rhineland in the event of a firm British response, or that Britain could, together with France and Belgium and possibly the Soviet Union, form a coalition to drive Germany from the Rhineland and prevent the Second World War. The Cabinet record demonstrates that the British Government did not believe they could remove Germany from the Rhineland without war, and the work of the revisionist writers suggests that the Cabinet was correct in this assumption. The other traditional criticism of British foreign policy in the thirties, that she rearmed too late, can be undermined by investigating the socio-economic crises of the inter-war years. Through investigation into the Cabinet record of the period, it can be shown that the Cabinet was aware of the potential socio- economic impact of rearmament in the years before 1936, yet a detailed analysis of these factors is missing in the revisionist interpretations. This omission allows room for criticism of Britain’s response to the crisis. A thorough investigation into Britain’s social, economic, military and diplomatic condition in the thirties, while acknowledging the risk of war with Germany in March 1936, allows for a full appreciation of the response of the Cabinet to the remilitarization of the Rhineland. Britain’s leaders can, with hindsight, be criticised for not taking greater financial risks to rearm in the early thirties, but the need for rearmament only became certain in the later thirties. Britain had no need to take such risks in the early thirties; her economy was recovering and the extent of Hitler’s future demands could not be known. The Rhineland Crisis was not the last chance to stop Hitler without war because Britain could not stop Hitler in 1936 without war; yet the traditional interpretation does not acknowledge the evidence of Germany’s willingness to risk war uncovered by the revisionists. Rapid rearmament was financially dangerous and potentially provocative. Britain’s public would not, and the economy could not, support the level of rearmament necessary in the years up to 1936 to produce the military strength required to police the Empire and simultaneously oppose the threats posed by Germany, Japan, Italy and the Soviet Union.
That the Cabinet discussed these threats in such detail is a testament to their understanding of the global situation in 1936 and an effective counter to those that suppose
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the British inaction following the events of 7 March was motivated by ignorance or flawed judgements. The Cabinet appreciated that the outcome of the Rhineland Crisis would decide ‘the course of events in Europe over the next ten years’ and understood that their influence ‘was greater than that of any other nation.’462 The Cabinet carefully considered the responses available to them during the Rhineland Crisis and concluded, accurately, that either military or economic sanctions would result in a war with Germany. To negotiate during the Rhineland Crisis was to allow time for both a calming of global tensions and for Britain’s rearmament programme to advance. That there could be no final negotiated settlement with Hitler could not be known for certain in 1936. It was not a mistake to attempt such a settlement, but it would have been a mistake to pursue a military response to this crisis given the deficiencies in Britain’s armed forces and the dangerous international situation that had developed by 1936. The major international crises of the inter-war years, the Manchurian, Abyssinian and Rhineland Crises and the later Spanish Civil War, combined to convince the British public that the League of Nations had failed and that another world war would be ‘unavoidable sooner or later, or at least could only be checked by a Britain armed right up to the limits of her capacity.’ 463 This realisation came too late to allow a rearmament programme that would have afforded Britain the option of responding with her military to the remilitarization of the Rhineland. Because of Britain’s military deficiencies Germany, like Japan and Italy before her, escaped with her prize and, as prophesised by the British Cabinet, became more audacious in her foreign policy demands.
I have argued criticism of the British response to the Rhineland Crisis is unjust given Britain’s particular circumstances in the years to March 1936 and during the Rhineland Crisis. Throughout this thesis I have argued that social, economic, military and diplomatic factors heavily influenced the Cabinet’s response to the Rhineland Crisis. This has been proven through the extensive use of archival material from the period. Rather than being ignorant of the effects of inaction during the Rhineland Crisis, the Cabinet recognized the dangers of the international situation in 1936 and were conscious of their inability to respond realistically with Britain’s military. When viewed in context it becomes clear that Britain could do little to prevent German, Italian or Japanese aggression in the mid-thirties. Britain could not risk war with any one of these powers unless she was certain that any combination of the three would not unite, or the Soviet Union act independently, to expose Britain’s
462 Eden during the 11 March Cabinet meeting. CAB 23/83, 4. 463 Bismarck in a memorandum to the German Foreign Ministry received 29 June 1936. DGFP Series C Vol. V, 692. 67
‘being otherwise engaged.’ 464 Due to her profound weakness in 1936 Britain’s military advisors warned that they could not ‘contemplate with confidence the outcome of war’ over the Rhineland. 465 The Committee of Imperial Defence stated that it was ‘of paramount importance to Britain’s strategical interests’ to avoid any hostilities until she had completed her rearmament programme.466 Any attempt to remove Germany by force from the Rhineland would have resulted in at least one war. The Cabinet recognised that the danger of war in 1936 was real, and after the Rhineland Crisis, began to repair Britain’s armed forces and educate the public to the danger of these formidable and antagonistic powers. Faced with a dangerous international situation, military deficiencies and a lack of suitable allies, the British Cabinet embarked upon, and then abandoned, a policy of negotiation with Germany. They were not ignorant or oblivious of the dangers of this course. Instead they concluded that the likely result of a war with Germany in 1936 would be worse than even a temporary peace. When Britain’s social, economic, military and diplomatic position in the mid-thirties is investigated such a conclusion can be defended and justified.
When viewed out of context, and with the benefit of hindsight, the inaction of the British Government can be portrayed as a grave error. The remilitarization of the Rhineland allowed Germany to pursue her goals in Central and Eastern Europe. As these later acts demonstrated, Hitler could not be appeased. However, this thesis shows that the British Cabinet was aware of the consequences of appeasement in March 1936 and took steps to rectify the deficiencies that had necessitated inaction. The justification for their response is that the Cabinet believed, and the revisionist work supports, that Germany was willing to resort to war over the Rhineland. A war in 1936, without the assistance of the Soviets, Italians or Americans, supported only by the notoriously defensive French Army and negligible Belgian forces, was a gloomy prospect for the British. It is impossible and counter- factual to speculate on who might have emerged as the potential victor of a war in 1936. What can be stated is that Germany and her allies were defeated in the Second World War. The resistance of the Royal Air Force during the Battle of Britain ensured that the war in Europe continued. Without the breathing space provided by Britain’s reaction to the Rhineland Crisis Britain risked entering a war with Germany in 1936 with incomplete air defences, an aged Navy, a poorly equipped Army and, crucially, a general public uncertain of
464 Eden in a memorandum on The Italo-Ethiopian Dispute: Sanctions circulated 11 June 1936. CAB 24/262, 3. 465 Report by the Joint Planning Sub-Committee circulated 21 July 1936. CAB 24/263, 10. 466 Memorandum circulated by the Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee of the Committee of Imperial Defence, Problems Facing His Majesty’s Government in the Mediterranean as a result of the Italo-League Dispute, 18 June 1936. CAB 24/263, 4. 68 the merits of such a conflict. While later examples of appeasement convinced the public of the need for war, the Manchurian, Abyssinian and Rhineland crises together began to convince the majority of the general public of the need for rearmament. The importance of this, given the hostility among the public towards the armed forces that existed during the twenties and early thirties should not be underestimated. Without the calm handling of the Rhineland Crisis the British might have entered another world war without the benefit of the time bought by their response to the remilitarization of the Rhineland. In practice peace was only maintained for three years, but the importance of these years can shown by the shift from the social and economic conditions explained in chapter one and the restoration of the military deficiencies detailed in chapter two. That these three years were crucial can also be shown in Britain’s subsequent victory in the Second World War. She entered the war in 1939 with greater popular support and stronger armed forces than she had had in 1936. It was the correct decision to avoid war in 1936, and the decision of the Cabinet was vindicated in 1945.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Glossary
CAB - Cabinet Papers
PREM - Records of the Prime Minister’s Office
PRO - Domestic Records of the Public Record Office
T - Treasury Papers
WO - War Office Papers
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Minerva Access is the Institutional Repository of The University of Melbourne
Author/s: Reynolds, Benjamin Thomas
Title: The British Government and the Rhineland Crisis
Date: 2010
Citation: Reynolds, B. T. (2010). The British Government and the Rhineland Crisis. Masters Research thesis , School of Historical Studies, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne.
Persistent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11343/35868
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