David L. Hoggan
4,041 words
Part 2 of 5 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)
Given that both the United States and the Soviet Union were far larger and more powerful than Germany, and that the British themselves were still presiding over an enormous empire, one may wonder why Britain’s leadership was in such agreement on the supposedly urgent need to resist a far smaller power’s efforts to consolidate more of the German-speaking population of Central Europe within her borders. According to Hoggan, the answer lies in the hold of the traditional British balance of power policy on their minds.
The concept of the “balance of power” has its roots in the politics of Renaissance Italy, where the various cities formed alliances to prevent the Duchy of Milan from gaining supremacy; this diplomatic strategy was cast into theoretical form by Machiavelli. But as Hoggan notes, balance-of-power thinking cannot be successfully applied in all situations. In Italy, the strategy became obsolete once large outside powers such as Spain and France intervened in the peninsula’s politics. Moreover, even where best applicable, the balance-of-power principle involves a peculiar and questionable moral vision: Any state that grows in power and prosperity beyond the level of its neighbors is cast into the role of enemy regardless of its domestic institutions or foreign policy. Success is treated as tantamount to aggression. In Hoggan’s words, the balance of power policy
substituted for a healthy pursuit of common interests among states the tortuous attempt to undermine or even destroy any state which obtained a leading position [and] demanded otherwise inexplicable shifts of position when it was evident one state had been overestimated or another underestimated.
The balance-of-power model was introduced to England by Thomas Cromwell in the time of Henry VIII. Hoggan includes a brief historical sketch of subsequent British diplomatic and military history from that period through the early twentieth century, demonstrating that a balance-of-power policy usually — although not uninterruptedly — inspired the foreign policy of British leaders over a period of four centuries. The British opposed France in the Age of Napoleon because she was the largest continental power. When leadership passed to Prussia and Germany later in the century, British policy shifted accordingly. Then, following the First World War, France briefly reemerged as the leading power on the European continent. This was not because she had achieved any new increment to her own power, but simply by default following the collapse of all her potential rivals: Germany lay defeated, Austria-Hungary was dismembered, and Russia was reduced to famine by Bolshevism and civil war. So when France occupied Germany’s Ruhr Valley in 1923 in an attempt to collect war reparations under the Versailles Treaty — to which Britain herself had agreed — the British leadership came out in opposition!
It was thus almost inevitable that Britain would sour on Germany in the 1930s as she gradually regained a position as the dominant power in Europe. Objections to National Socialism or Hitler’s Jewish policy were more pretext that motive; Hoggan notes that, although the world has since forgotten it, Poland had anti-Jewish policies in some respects harsher than Germany’s during these years.
The United States and the Soviet Union played a role in the Europe of the 1930s not unlike that of France and Spain in Renaissance Italy — outside powers whose intervention rendered inherited balance-of-power considerations anachronistic. Yet, Britain was not alone in badly underestimating the threat from Bolshevik Russia. It seemed incredible to most observers that a state with such an irrational economic system, and barely able to feed its own people, could constitute a serious military threat to the entire European continent. In 1935, one leading British politician publicly surmised that the Soviet Union would be unable to wage a war of aggression for 50 years! Moreover, Stalin had just shot himself in the foot by purging 25,000 officers from the Red Army. No one predicted that the Soviet military would soon reveal itself as one of the greatest killing machines in human history. As Hoggan emphasizes, a defensive alliance between Germany and Poland would have represented a powerful bulwark against Communist expansion. But few outside the German leadership perceived the desirability of such an arrangement at the time.
And so the British persisted with their futile and dangerous policy of hostility toward Germany.
* * *
Resolution of the Czech crisis led Hitler to believe the time was right for a concrete offer to settle German-Polish differences. On October 24, 1938 his Foreign Minister, Joachim Ribbentrop, conveyed his proposal to the Polish ambassador. It required Poland to acquiesce in Germany’s annexation of Danzig and permit construction of a highway and railway transit route linking East Prussia to the rest of Germany. (Hitler privately indicated to Ribbentrop that, if necessary to arrive at an agreement, he would be prepared to give up the rail link.) In exchange,
Poland would be granted a permanent free port in Danzig and the right to build her own highway and rail road to the port. The entire Danzig area would be a permanent free market for Polish goods on which no German customs duties would be levied. Germany would take the unprecedented step of recognizing and guaranteeing the existing German-Polish frontier.
Hoggan considers this last offer especially generous: Hitler “was prepared to pay a high price for Polish friendship. The renunciation of every piece of German territory lost to Poland since 1918 would have been unthinkable to the leaders of the Weimar Republic.” The British ambassador in Berlin noted that “of all Germans, Hitler is the most moderate so far as Danzig and the Corridor are concerned.”
Nor was this an isolated case: Hitler had already renounced Alsace-Lorraine, and viewed the loss of South Tyrol as the price of his friendship with the Duce. He had long maintained it would be childish to insist on the return of every square inch of territory that had ever been German. What he sought was a compromise between the entirety of German-speaking territory and the punitive losses imposed by the victors at Versailles.
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Beck adopted delaying tactics for nearly five months, constantly putting off a definite response to Hitler’s proposals. Particularly successful with his German interlocutors was his pretense that adverse Polish public opinion made a final settlement difficult. The German Chancellor was patient and set no deadline.
Meanwhile, conditions for the German minority in Poland continued to deteriorate. Increasing numbers of Germans were being sentenced to prison for alleged remarks such as “the Führer would have to straighten things out here.” Mass anti-German demonstrations and boycotts of German businesses became common, but the Polish government looked the other way. In February 1939, contrary to previous Polish assurances, Germans were made to supply 71% of the acreage for Poland’s annual land reform measures, virtually completing the expropriation of German holdings.
In the tiny industrial region of Teschen, which Poland had acquired from the Czechs following the Munich Conference, German-language schools were closed and parents threatened with unemployment if they did not send their children to Polish schools. German doctors and lawyers were forbidden to practice unless they learned Polish within three months. Germans’ assets were frozen and their pensions and state salaries reduced. About 20% of the German population fled the district within the first month of Polish occupation, and emergency camps had to be built in Silesia to house refugees.
Reports of these events began appearing in German provincial newspapers, stirring fierce resentment among ordinary Germans. Hitler moved swiftly to impose press controls, declaring that it was his policy “to release nothing unfavorable to Poland; this also applies to incidents involving the German minority.” Representatives of the Teschen Germans travelled to the Foreign Office in Berlin, but their complaints were rejected; the government was unwilling to jeopardize its prospects of an agreement with Poland regarding Danzig and the Corridor.
Due to Beck’s delaying tactics, the winter of 1938-39 passed amid friendly but meaningless diplomatic contacts until a new series of events triggered open Polish rejection and British intervention in March. Perhaps the most interesting episode in Hoggan’s narrative of the intervening months is Prime Minister Chamberlain’s visit to Italy from January 11 through 14. It is less important for its immediate consequences than for what it reveals about the thinking of the British leadership.
Accompanying Chamberlain to Rome was British Foreign Secretary Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax. In Hoggan’s telling, Halifax was the individual most responsible for the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939, and he dominates the subsequent narrative. Hoggan describes him as “one of the most self-assured, ruthless, clever and self-righteous diplomats the world has ever seen.” In his maiden speech to the House of Commons in 1910, Halifax “denied that all men are created equal” and “called on the British people to remain true to their calling of a ‘superior race’ within the British Empire.” Despite having been born with a withered left arm, he participated in some battles of the First World War. He had no patience with conscientious objectors. In 1918 he was involved in organizing a letter to the Prime Minister demanding a hard line with the defeated Germans. Between the wars he held many important government posts, including six years as Viceroy of India. By 1935 he had become an important voice in the conduct of British diplomacy. A champion of the balance-of-power policy, he viewed war with Germany as necessary following Hitler’s occupation of the Rhineland in 1936. He became Chamberlain’s Foreign Secretary in February 1938. Regarding the motives of his anti-German belligerence, the author has this to say:
It was for the prestige of Great Britain rather for such mundane considerations as national security or immediate British interests that Halifax became a proponent of war. [He] did not propose to tolerate the existence in 1939 of a German Reich more prosperous and more influential than the Hohenzollern Empire which had been destroyed in 1918.
According to Hoggan, Chamberlain took the lead in determining British foreign policy through the Czech crisis, but Halifax subsequently enjoyed a free hand.
The two men arrived in Rome on January 11, 1939, and their first meeting with Mussolini took place the same day. Mussolini stated that a new world war could destroy civilization, and he deplored the failure of the Four Munich Powers to cooperate more closely to preserve peace. He also said he favored arms limitations.
The following day, Chamberlain turned the discussion to Germany:
He claimed to be impressed by rumors of sinister German intentions. He had heard that Germany was planning to establish an independent Ukraine, and to attack Great Britain, France, Poland, and the Soviet Union. Mussolini assured the British leaders that German armaments were defensive, and that Hitler had no plans for an independent Ukraine or for attacks on the various countries which Chamberlain had mentioned. He added that Germany desired peace. Chamberlain disagreed. He declared that German arms were more than sufficient to deal with attacks from countries immediately adjacent to Germany, and that hence the Germans must be harboring aggressive plans. He claimed that Great Britain, on the other hand, was merely concerned with defending herself from the German menace.
Following a dinner at the British Embassy the next day, Chamberlain repeated to the Italian leader
that he distrusted Hitler, and that he remained unconvinced by Mussolini’s arguments that the German armament program was defensive in scope. He hoped to make Mussolini uneasy by referring to a rumor that Germany had launched special military preparations in the region near the Italian frontier [a claim reminiscent of the Czech hoax the previous May]. He assured Mussolini categorically that Great Britain and France, in contrast to 1938, were now prepared to fight Germany. . . . Chamberlain complained of “feverish armament” in Germany, and alleged German offensive plans. Mussolini, in denying such plans existed, placed primary emphasis on the point that German defensive requirements should be considered in relation to the Russian armament campaign. It is significant that there is no mention of this point in the British record.
The Italian leader pointed to the Westwall (or “Siegfried Line”) along Germany’s frontier with France and Belgium as an indication of her armament’s defensive nature. Chamberlain responded that if Hitler was sincere in his desire for peace, he ought to speak of it publicly. An astonished Mussolini asked if Chamberlain had missed Hitler’s recent New Year’s address in which he had done just that. Wanting to allay British suspicions of Germany, Mussolini proposed a general disarmament conference as soon as the Spanish Civil War ended. Chamberlain displayed no interest.
The British goal for these talks, which were agreed to beforehand between Halifax and Chamberlain, was to intimidate Mussolini and discourage him from standing by Germany when war came. They were successful, although this did not become clear for several months. For his part, Mussolini was deeply frustrated and understood that Germany was now in danger of a British attack.
A few days later, Halifax applied similar treatment to American President Franklin Roosevelt, writing to him of “a large number of reports from various reliable sources which throw a most disquieting light on Hitler’s intentions.” He claimed that Hitler intended to destroy the Western powers in a surprise attack before moving on to the East, adding some colorful rhetoric about “Hitler’s mental condition, his insensate rage against Great Britain and his megalomania.” It was impossible to lay such talk on too thickly with the bellicose American President; anyone in his entourage who did not declare Hitler insane was “virtually ostracized.”
During February and early March 1939, a rift developed between the Czechs and Slovaks in what was left of Czechoslovakia. The Czech-dominated Prague government insisted on stationing Czech troops in Slovakia and Slovak troops in the Czech lands, while the Slovaks wanted their boys back home and the Czechs off their territory; financial differences and greater Slovak sympathy for the Germans were also points of contention. A crisis arrived on March 9, when the Prague government dismissed the four principle Slovak ministers from the local government in the Slovak capital of Bratislava. Fighting in the streets ensued, and on March 14 Slovakia declared independence.
Germany quickly extended diplomatic recognition to the new state. Hitler then decided to occupy the remaining Czech lands — in part to prevent war between Czechs and Slovaks, and in part because of the Czechs’ continuing anti-German policies. On the evening of March 14, Czech President Emil Hácha travelled to Berlin. He made a plea for the continuation of Czech independence and offered to reduce the army. Hitler rejected this, ordering German troops into the Czech lands the next morning. Hácha telephoned Prague to advise against resistance.
On March 16, the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia was proclaimed. Formal German military rule lasted just one month, until April 16. Hoggan observes that Hitler “was willing to grant the Czechs the autonomy they had persistently refused to give the Sudeten Germans.” President Hácha appointed a new Czech government on April 27, but the departments of Foreign Affairs and Defense were dissolved.
Contrary to a widespread legend, Britain extended no guarantee to the Czechs, either at the Munich Conference or subsequently, so their failure to intervene in March 1939 did not constitute a “betrayal.” Hitler later explained to the British ambassador that “the protectorate in Bohemia-Moravia had been a necessity ‘for the moment,’ but that, as far as he was concerned, the area in the future could become anything, provided it was not a bastion against Germany.” Hoggan even makes this extraordinary claim: “It was evident within a few weeks after the proclamation of the Protectorate . . . that the new regime enjoyed considerable popularity among the Czechs.”
In the larger context of European politics, the significance of the final Czechoslovak crisis of March 1939 lay in providing the occasion for Britain to proclaim her hostile intentions toward Germany openly. On the evening of March 15, Halifax told the German ambassador that his country’s actions “implied a rejection of good relations with Great Britain. He also insisted that Germany was ‘seeking to establish a position in which they could by force dominate Europe, and, if possible, the world.” As Hoggan notes, the British had previously done everything possible to create the impression that the future of Czechoslovakia was a matter of perfect indifference to them. Now they declared that events there had convinced them Hitler was out to conquer the world.
Halifax then organized “one of the most fantastic intrigues of modern diplomacy.” A German trade delegation happened to be visiting Romania at this time to negotiate a perfectly ordinary commercial treaty. On March 17, at Halifax’s prodding, Romania’s ambassador to Britain declared that this delegation had presented an ultimatum to Romania. Coming on the heels of the occupation of Prague, this sensational claim provoked “bewilderment, anxiety, and outspoken hostility toward Germany” among the British public. Denials quickly arrived from Romania itself, but the British leadership managed to keep the story going for several days. Halifax even made an absurd appeal to the Soviet Union to help defend Romania from “German aggression” — to the consternation of the Romanian government, which was far more anxious about Soviet Russia than about Germany.
Also on March 17, Prime Minister Chamberlain was preparing to give an address on British domestic affairs in Birmingham. Halifax induced him to substitute the text of a belligerent speech on Germany:
The role assigned by Halifax to Prime Minister Chamberlain at Birmingham was one of outraged innocence. Chamberlain agreed to present himself as the victim of German duplicity, who had awakened at last in a great rage to admit he had been duped. [He] solemnly declared that he would never believe Hitler again. Chamberlain warned his listeners that Hitler might be embarking on an attempt to conquer the world.
Three days later, completing Britain’s diplomatic volte face, Halifax “informed Paris, Moscow, and Warsaw that he wished to have an ironclad military pact of Great Britain, France, Russia, and Poland against Germany.” There were many obstacles to the pact Halifax desired, however: France wanted peace, the Poles rejected any agreement with Russia, and the Soviet leaders replied noncommittally.
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Meanwhile, Poland had also decided to come out into the open against Germany. On March 23 Beck conferred with military leaders, who instantly issued orders for a partial mobilization. This brought 334,000 new soldiers into the armed forces, more than doubling the strength of the Polish army. The same day Beck had a prominent journalist arrested for advocating a German-Polish agreement.
Three days later, on March 26, Poland’s ambassador in Berlin delivered a note categorically rejecting the proposals that had been pending since the previous October. Germany was warned that Poland would fight to prevent the return of Danzig. The most destructive war in human history was to be triggered by a dispute over a city of 400,000 inhabitants.
War fever began to grip Poland. Military leaders made delusional claims that their ill-equipped forces were superior to those of Germany, and planned for a direct assault on Berlin. An anti-German pressure group drew thousands of participants to a public meeting in Polish West Prussia at which speakers bitterly denounced the Germans. Afterwards, bands of Poles roamed the streets, assaulting any Germans they came across.
By this time, Halifax understood that an anti-German alliance that included both Poland and Russia was an impossibility, at least for the time being. He determined to go ahead with plans for an alliance with Poland as its only Eastern member. As Hoggan wryly notes, it might have been possible to choose Russia over a lesser power such as Poland, but this would not have gotten Halifax the war he sought.
On March 31, Halifax announced in Parliament that Britain was extending a unilateral guarantee to Poland. It was not limited to cases of aggression, but would be valid even if Poland attacked Germany. Observers noted that this was the first time in history Britain had abandoned to an outside power the decision as to whether she would go to war. As Hoggan notes, “it was the most provocative move that Halifax could have made under the circumstances, and it was the step most likely to produce another European war.” A few days later, he privately admitted to the American ambassador that neither Hitler nor Mussolini wanted war. All the breathless public statements about “German aggression” were a hoax meant to deceive the public.
To summarize: In less than three weeks following Czechoslovakia’s final crisis, the entire European continent had been brought into a state of high tension by the actions of Halifax and Beck.
Hitler’s behavior during these critical days was cautious. Even the final rejection of his proposals by the Poles on March 26 did not make him despair of an eventual diplomatic settlement, and his military men were baffled that they still did not have permission to draw up plans for a possible campaign in Poland. Only in April did Hitler finally allow this. Hoggan writes:
Polish provocation of Germany after March 31, 1939, was frequent and extreme, and Hitler soon had more than a sufficient justification to go to war with Poland on the basis of traditional practices among the nations. Hitler, who was usually very prompt and decisive in conducting German policy [cf. the Austrian crisis], showed considerable indecision before he finally decided to act. He did not abandon his hope for a negotiated settlement with Poland until he realized that the outlook was completely hopeless.
We shall skip somewhat lightly over events between this point and the final August crisis, although Hoggan treats them in more detail.
Perhaps the most important landmark was Beck’s chauvinistic speech to the Polish legislature on May 5. Beck claimed that the Versailles Treaty’s arrangements for Germany in the East had been fair and just, and therefore Hitler had no grounds for proposing any changes; that his offer to recognize the existing frontier with Poland was worthless; that Germany had not offered one concession to Poland, but merely presented demands; that Hitler had sought to impose a time limit on negotiations; that he was deliberately seeking to humiliate Poland and exclude her from the Baltic; and that his proposals were an assault on Poland’s fundamental honor and an effort to degrade her into a mere vassal of Germany. Beck even made a stunning claim that the territory of the Corridor “is an ancient Polish land, with an insignificant percentage of German colonists.” In short, the speech was, in Hoggan’s words, “studded with impudent lies from beginning to end.” But ordinary Poles did not know this, and the country erupted in a patriotic frenzy. Congratulatory telegrams poured into Beck’s office, and millions of Poles were now single-mindedly disposed to go to war against Germany.
Predictably, the situation of Germans in Poland became alarming. Men were beaten for speaking German in public, mobs destroyed German-owned buildings, and throughout the country Germans were threatened: “If war comes, you will all be hanged.” Polish authorities either denied such things were happening or blamed Hitler for them.
Poland based its military planning on what Hoggan calls “the disastrous and false assumption that there would be a major French offensive against Germany.” British leaders also privately considered the participation of France as an essential precondition for their launching of hostilities against Germany, although this had not been made clear in their guarantee to Poland. And France had never agreed to any such thing. French Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet privately told Prime Minister Édouard Daladier during these months that
an Anglo-French war against Germany was quite unnecessary, and that he would prefer to resign than to have any part in the launching of such a disastrous conflict. Daladier assured Bonnet that he sympathized with his attitude, and urged him to remain at his post and continue the fight for peace.
Meanwhile, neither Britain nor France did anything to remedy the military unpreparedness of the Poles, who suffered a ten-to-one disadvantage in fighter aircraft and a 12-to-one disadvantage in armored vehicles as compared to Germany. The only beneficiary of the situation was Soviet Russia, which hoped for a conflict between Germany and the Western powers that would exhaust these “capitalist powers” and create conditions favorable for the expansion of Communism. Halifax continued to campaign diplomatically for Soviet support during these months, but his efforts were clumsy and ineffectual.
The ”Pact of Steel” between Germany and Italy, announced with great fanfare on May 22, was less significant than it appeared at the time; it did not formally require Italy to go to war at Germany’s side. Hoggan dismisses it as a “fair-weather alliance.”
Found at https://counter-currents.com/2023/12/hitler-the-peacemaker-part-2/
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