History of the Second World War (4 page)

But beyond their own hesitations were the objections of the Polish Government, and the other small powers in eastern Europe, to accepting military support from Russia — since these feared that reinforcement by her armies would be equivalent to invasion. So the pace of the Anglo-Russian negotiations became as slow as a funeral march.

Very different was Hitler’s response to the new situation. Britain’s violent reaction and redoubled armament measures shook him, but the effect was opposite to that intended. Feeling that the British were becoming opposed to German expansion eastward, and fearful of being blocked if he tarried, he drew the conclusion that he must accelerate his steps towards
lebensraum.
But how could he do it without bringing on a general war? His solution was coloured by his historically derived picture of the British. Regarding them as cool-headed and rational, with their emotions controlled by their head, he felt that they would not dream of entering a war on behalf of Poland unless they could obtain Russia’s support. So, swallowing his hatred and fear of ‘Bolshevism’, he bent his efforts and energies towards conciliating Russia and securing her abstention. It was a turn-about even more startling than Chamberlain’s — and as fatal in its consequences.

Hitler’s courting approach to Russia was eased because Stalin was already looking on the West from a new slant. The Russians’ natural resentment of the way they had been cold-shouldered by Chamberlain and Halifax in 1938 was increased when, after Hitler’s march into Prague, their fresh proposal for a joint defensive alliance had a tepid reception, while the British Government rushed into an independent arrangement with Poland. Nothing could have been more certain to deepen doubt and heighten suspicion.

On May 3 a warning, unmistakable except to the blind, was conveyed in the news that Litvinov, Russia’s Foreign Commissar, had been ‘released’ from office. He had long been the chief advocate of co-operation with the Western Powers in resistance to Nazi Germany. To his post was appointed Molotov, who was reported to prefer dealing with dictators to dealing with liberal democracies.

Tentative moves towards a Soviet-Nazi
entente
began in April, but were conducted on both sides with extreme wariness — for mutual distrust was profound, and each side suspected that the other might be merely trying to hinder it reaching an agreement with the Western Powers. But the slow progress of the Anglo-Russian negotiations encouraged the Germans to exploit the opportunity, quicken their pace, and press their suit. Molotov remained non-committal, however, until the middle of August. Then a decisive change took place. It may have been prompted by the Germans’ willingness, in contrast to British hesitations and reservations, to concede Stalin’s exacting conditions, especially a free hand with the Baltic States. It may also have been connected with the obvious fact that Hitler could not afford to postpone action in Poland beyond early September, lest the weather might bog him down, so that the postponement of the Soviet-German agreement until late in August ensured that there would not be time for Hitler and the Western Powers to reach another ‘Munich agreement’ — which might spell danger for Russia.

On August 23 Ribbentrop flew to Moscow, and the pact was signed. It was accompanied by a secret agreement under which Poland was to be partitioned between Germany and Russia.

This pact made war certain, and all the more so because of the lateness of the timing. Hitler could not draw back on the Polish issue without serious loss of face in Moscow. Moreover, his belief that the British Government would not venture on an obviously futile struggle to preserve Poland, and did not really wish to bring in Russia, had been freshly fostered by the way that Chamberlain had, in late July, started private negotiations with him through his trusted adviser, Sir Horace Wilson, for an Anglo-German pact.

But the Soviet-German Pact, coming so late, did not have the effect on the British that Hitler had reckoned. On the contrary, it aroused the ‘bulldog’ spirit — of blind determination, regardless of the consequences. In that state of feeling, Chamberlain could not stand aside without both loss of face and breach of promise.

Stalin had been only too well aware that the Western Powers had long been disposed to let Hitler expand eastward — in Russia’s direction. It is probable that he saw the Soviet-German Pact as a convenient device by which he could divert Hitler’s aggressive dynamism in the opposite direction. In other words, by this nimble side-step he would let his immediate and potential opponents crash into one another. At the least this should produce a diminution of the threat to Soviet Russia, and might well result in such common exhaustion on their part as to ensure Russia’s post-war ascendancy.

The Pact meant the removal of Poland as a buffer between Germany and Russia — but the Russians had always felt that the Poles were more likely to serve as a spearhead for a German invasion of Russia than as a barricade against it. By collaborating in Hitler’s conquest of Poland, and dividing it with him, they would not only be taking an easy way of regaining their pre-1914 property but be able to convert eastern Poland into a barrier space which, though narrower, would be held by their own forces. That seemed a more reliable buffer than an independent Poland. The Pact also paved the way for Russia’s occupation of the Baltic States and Bessarabia, as a wider extension of the buffer.

In 1941, after Hitler had swept into Russia, Stalin’s 1939 side-step looked a fatally short-sighted shift. It is likely that Stalin overestimated the Western nations’ capacity for resisting, and thus exhausting, Germany’s power. It is likely, too, that he also overestimated the initial resisting power of his own forces. Nevertheless, surveying the European situation in later years, it does not seem so certain as in 1941 that his side-step proved to Soviet Russia’s disadvantage.

For the West, on the other hand, it brought immeasurable harm. The primary blame for that lies with those who were responsible for the successive policies of procrastination and precipitation — in face of a palpably explosive situation.

Dealing with Britain’s entry into the war — after describing how she allowed Germany to re-arm and then to swallow Austria and Czecho-Slovakia, while at the same time spurning Russia’s proposals for joint action — Churchill says:

 . . . when every one of these aids and advantages has been squandered and thrown away, Great Britain advances, leading France by the hand, to guarantee the integrity of Poland — of that very Poland which with hyena appetite had only six months before joined in the pillage and destruction of the Czechoslovak State. There was sense in fighting for Czecho-Slovakia in 1938, when the German Army could scarcely put half a dozen trained divisions on the Western Front, when the French with nearly sixty or seventy divisions could most certainly have rolled forward across the Rhine or into the Ruhr. But this had been judged unreasonable, rash, below the level of modern intellectual thought and morality. Yet now at last the two Western democracies declared themselves ready to stake their lives upon the territorial integrity of Poland. History, which, we are told, is mainly the record of the crimes, follies, and miseries of mankind, may be scoured and ransacked to find a parallel to this sudden and complete reversal of five or six years’ policy of easy-going placatory appeasement, and its transformation almost overnight into a readiness to accept an obviously imminent war on far worse conditions and on the greatest scale. . . .

Here was decision at last, taken at the worst possible moment and on the least satisfactory ground, which must surely lead to the slaughter of tens of millions of people.*

* Churchill:
The Second World War
, vol I, pp. 311-12. Full biographical details of all books referred to in the text can be found on p. 715.

It is a striking verdict on Chamberlain’s folly, written in hindsight. For Churchill himself had, in the heat of the moment, supported Chamberlain’s pressing offer of Britain’s guarantee to Poland. It is only too evident that in 1939 he, like most of Britain’s leaders, acted on a hot-headed impulse — instead of with the cool-headed judgement that was once characteristic of British statesmanship.

CHAPTER 2 - THE OPPOSING FORCES AT THE OUTBREAK

On Friday September 1, 1939, the German armies invaded Poland. On Sunday, the 3rd, the British Government declared war on Germany, in fulfilment of the guarantee it had earlier given to Poland. Six hours later the French Government, more hesitantly, followed the British lead.

In making his fateful announcement to the British Parliament the seventy-year old Prime Minister, Mr Chamberlain, finished by saying: ‘I trust I may live to see the day when Hitlerism has been destroyed and a liberated Europe has been re-established.’ Within less than a month Poland had been overrun. Within nine months most of Western Europe had been submerged by the spreading flood of war. And although Hitler was ultimately overthrown, a liberated Europe was not re-established.

In welcoming the declaration of war, Mr Arthur Greenwood, speaking for the Labour Party, expressed his relief that ‘the intolerable agony of suspense from which all of us have suffered is over. We now know the worst.’ From the volume of cheers it was clear that he was expressing the general feeling of the House. He ended: ‘May the war be swift and short, and may the peace which follows stand proudly for ever on the shattered ruin of an evil name.’

No reasonable calculation of the respective forces and resources provided any ground for believing that the war could be ‘swift and short’, or even for hoping that France and Britain alone would be able to overcome Germany — however long the war continued. Even more foolish was the assumption that ‘We now know the worst’.

There were illusions about the strength of Poland. Lord Halifax — who, as Foreign Minister, ought to have been well-informed — believed that Poland was of more military value than Russia, and preferred to secure her as an ally. That was what he conveyed to the American Ambassador on March 24, a few days before the sudden decision to offer the British guarantee to Poland. In July, the Inspector-General of the Forces, General Ironside, visited the Polish Army and on his return gave what Mr Churchill described as ‘most favourable’ reports.*

* Churchill:
The Second World War,
vol. I, p. 357.

There were still greater illusions about the French Army. Churchill himself had described it as ‘the most perfectly trained and faithful mobile force in Europe’.† When he saw General Georges, the Commander-in-Chief of the French field armies, a few days before the war, and saw the comparative figures of French and German strength, he was so favourably impressed as to say: ‘But you are the masters.’‡

† April 14, 1938.

‡ Churchill:
The Second World War,
vol. I, p. 357.

This may have increased the eagerness with which he joined in pressing the French to hasten to declare war in support of Poland — the French Ambassador’s dispatch said: ‘One of the most excited was Mr Winston Churchill; bursts of his voice made the telephone vibrate.’ In March, too, Churchill had declared himself ‘in the most complete agreement with the Prime Minister’ over the offer to guarantee Poland. Along with almost all Britain’s political leaders he had dwelt on its value as a means of preserving peace. Mr Lloyd George had been alone in pointing out its impracticability and danger — and his warning was described by
The Times
as ‘an outburst of inconsolable pessimism from Mr Lloyd George, who now seems to inhabit an odd and remote world of his own.’

For balance, it should be mentioned that these illusions about the prospects were not shared in the more sober military circles.§ But in general the prevailing mood of the moment was supercharged with emotions that drowned the sense of immediate realities, and obscured the long view.

§ My own strategic appreciation written at the outbreak of war, forecasting the early defeat of Poland and the likelihood that France would not long continue the fight, epitomised the situation in its conclusion: ‘In sum, by making our stand on ground that was strategically unsound we have got into a very bad hole — perhaps the worst in our history.’

Could Poland have held out longer? Could France and Britain have done more than they did to take the German pressure off Poland? On the face of the figures of armed strength, as now known, the answer to both questions would at first sight seem to be ‘Yes’. In
numbers
of men Poland had sufficient to check the German forces on her front, and at the least impose a long delay on their advance. It is equally apparent, on the figures, that the French should have been able to defeat the German forces left to oppose them in the West.

The Polish Army consisted of thirty active divisions and ten reserve divisions. It had also no less than twelve large cavalry brigades — although only one of them was motorised. Its potential strength in numbers was even larger than the total figure of divisions conveys — for Poland had nearly 2,500,000 ‘trained men’ available to mobilise.

France mobilised the equivalent of no divisions, of which no less than sixty-five were active divisions. They included five cavalry divisions, two mechanised divisions, and one armoured division that was in process of being formed — the rest being infantry. Of the grand total, even after providing for the defence of southern France and North Africa against a possible threat from Italy, the French Command were able to concentrate eighty-five divisions on their northern front facing Germany. Moreover, they could mobilise 5,000,000 trained men.

Britain had promised to send four Regular divisions to France at the outset of war — besides providing for the defence of the Middle East and the Far East — and actually sent the equivalent of five divisions. Because of the problem of sea transport, however, and the circuitous route considered necessary to avoid air attack, this initial contingent could not arrive until late in September.