It was an unbelievable diplomatic coup; it called the bluff of the Western Allies over their guarantees to Poland, which without the intervention of the Soviet Union on their side, they had absolutely no hope of honouring. The Western Allies had been confident that the Soviet Union — Nazi Germany’s declared adversary and target of the Anti Comintern alliance — would join them in giving a guarantee to Poland. But bearing in mind the deep-rooted Russian ambivalence towards an independent Polish state, which for over a century had largely been part of their sphere of influence, the Allies were naïve to expect this. More importantly, the Anglo-French allies had nothing to offer Stalin; unlike Hitler, they were neither willing nor able to acquiesce to Stalin’s demands for extensive Soviet annexations along the Soviet Union’s western frontiers, at least not in 1939.
The Anglo-French guarantee to Poland was meaningless without Russia. They had fallen into a trap and were now faced with either declaring war against Nazi Germany and risking defeat, or seeking a humiliating climb down, abandoning their guarantees to Poland, and coming up with a new Munich-style solution. This latter option would mean the end of France and Great Britain as great powers in Europe, and would de facto acknowledge Nazi Germany as an unassailable superpower on the Continent. Their last best hope was to reinforce in France behind the substantive defences of the Maginot Line, which was built from the Channel coast and along France’s border with Belgium and Germany, and stop the German advance in its tracks. In other words, the best they could hope for on their own was to repeat the stalemate of trench warfare that had occurred in the First World War; a stalemate that had only ended after the intervention of the United States — a nation which now showed no willingness to commit itself to the defence of democracy in Western Europe.
Hitler cynically staged a phony military incursion of German territory in Silesia on 31st August 1939. Nazi Germany then ‘retaliated’ in the early hours of 1st September 1939 with the battleship Schleswig Holstein shelling the Westerplatte Polish military enclave near Danzig harbour. Great Britain and France gave their respective German embassies an ultimatum to cease hostilities. The German authorities ignored them. Nazi Germany was now at war with Poland, Great Britain and France. A major European war had begun, but it was not yet a world war. The Red Army invaded Poland on 17th September 1939 and proceeded to annex eastern Poland, the three Baltic states, Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia (eastern Romania/Moldova). Later in the same year the Soviet Union also launched an invasion of Finland. The invasion of six sovereign nations did not apparently warrant a declaration of war by the Anglo-French Alliance against the Soviet Union, but Germany’s invasion of one nation, Poland, did. Britain and France were no more interested in the wider fate of Eastern Europe in 1939 than they would be in 1945. When Molotov spoke before the Supreme Soviet on 31st October 1939, six weeks after the Soviet Union had launched its invasion of eastern Poland, he cynically stated, ‘A single blow against Poland, first by the Germans and then by the Red Army, and nothing remained of this misbegotten child of the Versailles treaty, which owed its existence to the repression of non-Polish minorities.’ At this stage Stalin was of one mind with Hitler; both agreed that nothing should remain of the national existence of Poland. Molotov urged the Allies to seek terms with Germany, rather than pursue ‘childish’ and unrealistic objectives against Germany with regard to Poland.clxxxiii As far as the Russians were concerned, the conflict over Poland was a done deal and there was nothing the West could do about it. Molotov was mocking the Allies for their impotence. Poland had been partitioned out of existence for the fourth time by Russia and Germany. If the Anglo-French allies wanted to reinstate the Polish state, they would have to fight both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to do so.(8)
The period between the commencement of hostilities in Poland on 1st September 1939 and the battle for France, which began on 10th May 1940, has often been termed the ‘Phoney War’ in English and the Sitzkrieg (sitting-on-your-hands-war) by the Germans. This period remains one of the most neglected periods in the spiral of conflicts that would evolve into the Second World War, largely because it was such an unmitigated disaster for the Allies. It has been virtually forgotten that the French did actually manage to muster a force for the invasion of Germany, to honour their commitments to their Polish allies. On 7th September 1939, eight French divisions launched the Saar Offensive. They captured some 200 square kilometres of Germany, along with fifty villages, and then stopped abruptly in front of the German fortifications along the Siegfried Line and wondered what to do next.clxxxiv The Brits bombed Wilhelmshaven on 4th September, only three days after the outbreak of hostilities between Germany and Poland, but spent most of their time dropping propaganda leaflets on Germany. Essentially an air of unreality pervaded Europe’s halls of power following Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland and the Western Allies’ declarations of war upon the Third Reich. Was this really war? If so, who would strike first, or could there still be a last-ditch negotiated settlement? What was becoming clear was that if the Anglo-French allies were going to end up in a fighting war, they would much prefer to fight the coming conflict on someone else’s turf.
In what could have been one of the most suicidal and catastrophic decisions of the war, Britain and France determined to send aid and troops to support Finland, after the Red Army invaded her on the 30th November 1939. That would have put them at war with both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. This showed delusions of grandeur and muddled thinking at the very least. The overriding aim, however, was not to give any real tangible assistance to the Finns, but merely to take control of the iron ore that was produced in the northern mountains of Sweden, which then travelled overland to the Norwegian port of Narvik before being transported by sea — through the neutral territorial waters of Norway — to Germany. Allied troops were ostensibly supposed to cross these regions to assist the hardy Finns, but their real mission was to seize control of these vital strategic raw material reserves that were essential to the war effort of the Third Reich.clxxxv No matter that this would have necessitated breaching Sweden and Norway’s neutrality, if not requiring an outright invasion of two neutral countries who were not remotely minded to give their permission for the passage of troops through their country on the way to a war zone. Although the Finns put up a heroic defence against the Red Army, beating back their initial onslaught, they finally surrendered on the day that the Anglo-French Allies launched their invasion of Norway. The Allies were thereby spared having to go to the defence of the Finns and ending up at war with the Soviet Union. In contravention of Norway’s neutrality, the Allies mined Norwegian territorial waters, attacked German merchant shipping and escalated their plans for a land invasion. Goering’s Forschungsamt Intelligence Agency intercepted calls confirming these plans, not that they made any great effort to keep them secret.
While Hitler had taken a close personal interest in the invasion of Poland, he had largely left the generals of the OKH (High Command of the Armed Forces) and OKW (High Command of the Wehrmacht) to prepare and orchestrate it. This time, however, pushing aside the misgivings his generals voiced over the launching of a Scandinavian campaign, Hitler took personal charge of preparing the invasion of Denmark and Norway. In drawing up the plans, Hitler bypassed the usual channels and told Goering to subordinate his Luftwaffe (the air force) to the efforts of the army. Luftwaffe operations were taken over by Erhard Milch (the energetic and charismatic founder of Lufthansa). The clever integrated use of airpower in conjunction with the other wings of the military on land and sea played the decisive role in the campaign that was to follow. The British Admiralty (of which Winston Churchill was in charge as First Sea Lord) and the Bletchley Park monitoring station picked up the mass movement of German shipping through the Baltic but either ignored or misinterpreted their intentions. From 5th April, in six weeks of Blitzkrieg (lightning war), superb coordination of German forces and logistics put the Allies to shame. The Allies had, by contrast, embarked their armada piecemeal, wit
h troops separated from tanks, artillery and stores, all arriving at sixes and sevens on the Allied beachheads in Norway. The Allies failed to coordinate their air, land and sea operations and the Royal Navy complained that the high-sided fjords had played havoc with their radar systems; most of the damage to German forces was done by the Norwegians and their coastal defence batteries. They sank all ten German destroyers along with their refuelling fleet, and the bulk of their merchant vessels. The heavy cruiser, Blücher, was sunk and the battleships Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were so badly damaged they were put out of service for months.(11)
The Norway campaign had a significant impact on the evolution of the war. It reinforced Hitler’s belief in his own instincts and tactical abilities as a military commander. He had led the preparations for the invasion and he now basked in the glory of their success and in the disarray of his enemies, taking full credit for a highly successful military operation. The most significant future military impact for the Germans was the significant losses they had suffered to their navy and merchant marine. The German navy, which was already tiny in comparison to the combined British and French fleets, was now totally incapable of supporting a seaborne invasion of Great Britain. However, this fact was not fully realised until the Wehrmacht stood on the Channel coast and Britain refused to come to terms.
The Norway fiasco cost the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, who had been the architect of appeasement, his job. It could equally have done the same for Churchill, who, as head of the Admiralty, bore a heavy responsibility for the disaster. The invasion of Norway had been Churchill’s idea and he had pushed its acceptance upon the Cabinet. Churchill accepted full responsibility for his role in the affair to the House of Commons on 8th May and, despite his dislike of Chamberlain’s policies, he stood steadfastly loyal behind his leader. But it made no difference; the vote of ‘no confidence’ saw the Conservative Government’s majority of 200 cut to 81. Chamberlain accepted he had lost the support of the bulk of the parliamentary party and resigned. For a while it appeared as though the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, would take the reins of power and open negotiations with Germany. In addition to the support of many in his party, he had the support of the opposition Labour benches. Churchill may have been popular with the public at the time, but he was less popular in the House of Commons, and a considerable number within his own party had serious misgivings about putting the future of the country into the hands of an ‘adventurer’. During the First World War, Churchill’s plan for the invasion of southern Europe had led to disaster at Gallipoli. He had just made a virtually identical mistake in Norway. Many saw Churchill as a considerable risk, and a leap in the dark in Britain’s hour of crisis.(12) Remarkably it was Chamberlain who clinched the leadership for Churchill when, on the evening of 10th May, he went to the Palace to hand in his resignation and, much to the surprise of many in his party, told the King to call for Churchill. The maverick, who had warned Britain of the impending danger posed by Nazi Germany, was given his chance to shape British foreign policy and the course of the war.clxxxvi
At 5.30 on the morning of 10th May 1940, the battle for France began. It was prophetic coincidence that Churchill became prime minister that same day. Had the King called for Lord Halifax, no doubt history would have turned out very differently. Napoleon once famously said, ‘The side which stays within its fortifications is beaten.’ While the French fiddled with their ‘impenetrable’ string of fortifications along the Maginot Line, the British built up the forces of the BEF (British Expeditionary Force) behind the Belgian border. Both believed a route through the 100-kilometre gap in their defences in the Ardennes forests of southern Belgium, where the French had placed a mere ten of their weakest divisions, was impossible to traverse with heavy armour. In the classic 1970s British comedy Dad’s Army, when the head of the Home Guard, Captain Mainwaring, is informed by his adjutant that the Germans had invaded France he answered with considered ease, ‘They’ll never get through the Maginot Line,’ to which he receives the reply, ‘No Sir. They won’t need to, they’ve gone round it.’ Captain Mainwaring’s outburst was typical of many on that day in May 1940 when he said, ‘Bloody dastardly Hun.’
The Germans just weren’t playing by the rules. The British were clearly hoping to play out the last war all over again. There were also many on the German General Staff who feared that the war could become a re-run of their disastrous invasion of France in 1914 (as well as those such as Stalin who hoped it would). It very nearly did.clxxxvii Hitler intervened again, not only in making the decision to invade France and the Low Countries, but also by choosing the way the invasion was to be carried out. The German General Staff at the OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres — Supreme High Command of the German army) had attempted to dissuade Hitler from an attack on the West so soon after the invasion of Poland, Denmark and Norway. They argued that the military and German rearmament were not ready. When Hitler insisted, they devised a strategy not that dissimilar from the plan that had failed Imperial Germany during the First World War; to head through central Belgium towards the river Somme in northern France. Had they done this, they would have been met by the bulk of the French army and 200,000 British troops of the BEF.
Hitler was understandably not convinced by the plan proposed by his generals as it stood a high risk of getting bogged down, just as the virtually identical Schlieffen Plan had done during First World War. Hitler had heard of a brilliant young lieutenant general by the name of Erich von Manstein who had other ideas, and had him called to a meeting at the Reich Chancellery. Manstein and Hitler did not hit it off. The general was one of those stuffy ramrod Prussian types that Hitler was not at all comfortable in the company of. Yet he heard him out with uncharacteristic patience and recognised both the man’s talent and the boldness of his plan. It was exactly the kind of decisive stroke that was likely to catch the Allies off guard, and it was just what Hitler had been looking for. He ordered the invasion plans to be changed immediately.
Operation Gelb IV, nicknamed ‘The Manstein Plan’, planned to take Manstein’s ‘Army Group A’ through the Ardennes forests in southern Belgium, and through the least fortified part of the Maginot Line, hitting the French at the pivotal ancient fortress of Sedan, and then heading straight for the coast, thereby cutting off the BEF.clxxxviii At the same time, the plan was for ‘Army Group B’ to make a feint to the north, to wrong-foot the Allies, before swinging south towards Paris. ‘Strike hard and quickly and don’t disperse your forces,’ Heinz Guderian stated in his book, Achtung Panzer! (Watch Out — Tanks!). The book was the manual for the use of tanks, which advocated closely integrating them with the use of airpower and infantry in modern warfare. It was the blueprint for Blitzkrieg and had made a great impression on many field commanders, not least Erwin Rommel, who was the first to take his panzers across the river Meuse. Within three days, the German army had crossed the Meuse, broken the French line, and destroyed half the Allies’ aircraft on the ground. Within ten days of the start of the attack, the German army had reached the Channel, cutting off the BEF and stopping French forces in Belgium from moving south. It had been simple, it had been brilliant and it was an unmitigated success.
‘We shall never surrender’ was a welcome sentiment, but many wondered where the war could go from here. Hitler had just conquered Europe, the Swastika fluttered from the Eiffel Tower, and Britain stood alone, in no position to launch an invasion of the Continent.clxxxix In a little over six weeks, Blitzkrieg had achieved what four years of trench warfare had failed to attain during the First World War. Germany had lost 27,000 men to conquer most of Western Europe; France alone had lost over 90,000 men. The Allied superiority in men and arms had been wiped out by poor training, a lack of large-scale exercises before the war, poor deployment, poor leadership and above all a failure to integrate the use of land, air and sea power. That did not happen until Dunkirk, when a combination of fog and the tenacious efforts of the RAF and the Royal Navy saved the BEF from spending the r
est of the war in POW camps.
The German army now looked across the Channel and wondered what to do next. They weren’t particularly good swimmers! Hitler still hoped that ‘reason’ would prevail, and that the British would ‘come to their senses’ and seek terms. He was prepared to be ‘reasonable’, which meant an alliance with Germany, and Britain abandoning her pretensions of maintaining the balance of power in Europe. Henceforth, Britain’s empire and prosperity would depend on the good grace of Hitler and his successors. The pretence of preparations for the invasion of Britain was maintained as another waiting game commenced.
In reality, Operation Sea Lion (the invasion of Britain), the preparations for which continued throughout 1940 and the first half of 1941, with Dutch barges being ferried to the Channel coast, never had a real prospect of becoming an invasion. The Germans had lost much of their small merchant fleet in their pre-emptive action to stop the British landing forces in Norway. It would have taken years to build up a merchant and military fleet capable of embarking the Wehrmacht to southern England, and Hitler was not a patient man. Goering appeared to offer the solution by suggesting Britain could be taken by an air campaign alone. As in France, his Luftwaffe could destroy the British air force on the ground, sink her navy and lay the road for the mighty German Wehrmacht to embark on a leisurely invasion of the British Isles.
Death of a Nation Page 50
