I see Chamberlain as sincere but misguided. The fact he did the right thing when he finally realised he'd been conned (maybe allowed himself to be conned?) is a point in his favour, but the missed opportunities are hard to overlook.
Munich Shuffle: 1938-1942
- Thread starter Garrison
- Start date
Appeasement gets a bad rep because of this period - but it is the norm, its how we humans deal with each other from affairs of state to getting your 18 month old child to eat her dinner.
That Herr Hitler and his collection of criminals pretending to be a government instead played an insane game of brinkmanship and was dead set on war to achieve its bankrupt goals is on them.
As for the missed opportunities - well there were a lot of those about and all the governments missed them.
Garrison
Donor
The basic problem does come back to the underlying assumption that everyone understood that WWI had been a disaster for the nations of Europe and Britain and another war would be worse with the only real beneficiaries being the USA and perhaps the USSR. That Hitler genuinely wanted war and saw it as necessary to forge his new Aryan nation was simply incomprehensible. In short the British and French assumed they were dealing with a politician, not a murderous megalomaniac.
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It is worth remembering that before Munich in 1938 there was no political mandate from the British voting public for any other stance than appeasement. Chamberlain was carrying out the wishes of the greater majority of the British people who wanted to avid another war almost at any cost.
ISTM they would be 100% effective; sinking an Italian freighter while it was passing through Great Bitter Lake would be target practice.
Not really necessary for that, I think. Taking Massawa was important because it eliminated the Italian naval force in the Red Sea, and cleared the Red Sea for British shipping to Egypt.
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I wrote the very similar post above first. When I looked for a response several hours later, I couldn't find it. I thought that I had failed to actually publish it. (I've done that sometimes.) So I wrote this post - which also did not appear immediately, though the earlier post appeared soon after, and now this one has too. What's going on?
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26th January – 25th April 1941 – The Balkans – Part II – Churchill’s Choice
Garrison
Donor
26th January – 25th April 1941 – The Balkans – Part II – Churchill’s Choice
Despite the efforts of the Regia Aeronautica and the Regia Marina Britain supplies to the Greeks had largely been getting through, while the strength of the Italian air and naval forces had been further whittled away even as they were trying to support the last futile efforts to hold the line in Libya. Small arms, ammunition, rations, even surplus uniform items such as steel helmets had been dispatched in slowly increasing quantities as well as some larger items such as artillery pieces and tanks. As much as this had placed a strain on the British it was not enough for the Greeks. With a potential Italian counterattack imminent and the ominous prospect of the Germans opening up a front through Bulgaria the Greeks were far from confident about their ability to defend themselves. The uncertainty as to what the Yugoslavs were going to do made matters even more precarious and the Greek government, now headed by Alexandros Kyrgios after Metaxas death at the beginning of January, was calling not only for a substantial increase in material support but the dispatch of British troops to reinforce the defences [1].
The supply requests were greeted with considerable scepticism in London, delivering the tonnage the Greeks were asking for in a timely manner was considered all but impossible, indeed even if they were spread out over a longer timeframe it was seen as questionable whether they could be delivered without seriously impacting British operations elsewhere. At this point the dispatch of troops was less contentious. After some negotiation with the Greeks the Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden had an agreement in principle to dispatch two divisions to Greece, arriving around the beginning of April. The intention was to draw these troops, and any others that might be committed later, from Egypt, exactly what Marshal Badoglio had anticipated, Badoglio’s strategic obsessions were also the reason why the troops earmarked for Greece never set foot there.
General Wavell had been ordered not to mount an offensive operation against the Italians in Libya and he had been largely content to accept these orders. His subordinate, General Richard O’Connor, in charge of the Western Desert Force was however a proactive sort and had several officers under his command similarly inclined to not simply sit idly by and wait for the Italians to seize the initiative. As it happened patrol and reconnaissance operations were allowed, indeed even encouraged from London and Cairo and O’Connor exploited his latitude to the fullest. Some old hands in London might have envisioned something akin to the trench raids of World War I, a handful of troops stealing across No Man’s Land in the dead of night to try and seize prisoners and keep the enemy off balance. O’Connor certainly intended to seize prisoners and keep the Italians off balance, he was just planning to do things on a rather grander scale [2].
The first of what became known as a Long Range Patrol Group (LRPG) was formed in December 1940. They generally consisted of around one hundred men mounted in light vehicles, loaded down with supplies and heavy weapons to allow them to mount extended operations behind enemy lines. The first operations had largely been focused on probing the Italian defences looking for gaps or testing flanking routes that took the LRPGs into Sudan and Chad. By the spring they had conducted several deep incursions into Libya, targeting airfields and supply dumps and generally increasing the anxiety levels of Balbo and his staff. They did also take prisoners to interrogate, seized documents and maps and possibly most importantly acquired information on Italian codes that allowed much encrypted radio traffic that had been intercepted to be deciphered. Almost as Eden was finalizing his agreement with the Greeks an urgent report was winging its way to London warning that an Italian offensive was imminent and that all available reinforcements should be dispatched to Egypt at once [3].
General Sir John Dill was the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, the professional head of the British Army and the man primarily responsible for providing military advice to the War Cabinet. Once he was in receipt of the report from Wavell, he arranged an urgent meeting at No. 10 with Churchill and presented him with the latest information from Egypt. Churchill was initially reluctant to accept the contents of the report, it was not the first time that there had been reports of Italian movement in Libya. Dill though was clear that this was of a different order of magnitude than previous half-hearted preparations on the part of the Italians. The decoded Italian messages were particularly important in this respect as they made it clear how much pressure was being applied by Balbo’s staff to have troops ready for imminent action.
Dill had also consulted with Admiral Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord, who had provided a memo stating that if Alexandria were to be taken by the Italians, then the entire position of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean would be compromised, completely erasing the gains made by the attack on Taranto. In such circumstances Malta would potentially be exposed to attack and support of the Greeks would be all but impossible if the Mediterranean Fleet were forced to withdraw to Gibraltar. Dill also pointed out that if the Italians had Alexandria their logistical constraints would be greatly eased and they might then be able to threaten Suez, which would render the current efforts in East Africa to secure access to the Red Sea moot. That Dill and Pound were engaging in a fair bit of scaremongering with these ominous scenarios. That they did so reflected their determination that the British armed forces should avoid any further humiliating retreats because they had underestimated the strength and guile of Axis forces. Arguably they were in fact being influenced by the ‘guile’ of Marshal Badoglio, though given the progress of the attack on Egypt Badoglio would have cause to regret this success [4].
From the perspective of British prestige, the loss of the Suez Canal would be a major blow. The practical impact was lessened by the decision to reroute much of the shipping that normally passed through the canal around the Horn of Africa and thus the Suez Canal was not critical as a supply route at this time. The threat to Alexandria was far worse in practical terms, unhinging the entire British position in the Middle East and the Mediterranean, would supporting the Greeks be worth the potential cost? Especially if as seemed increasingly possible the Germans might intervene in support of the Italian offensive. Further complicating matter would be the Iraqi coup at the beginning of April, which will be discussed in more detail later, suffice to say for the moment this put further demands on British forces in the region.
The threat to Alexandria was the clinching arguments for Churchill and the one that he would put to the War Cabinet when they discussed the matter on the 8th of March. Eden was unhappy at having to send diplomats to explain to the Greeks that the dispatch of troops would be ‘postponed’. Any final decision was postponed by the launch of the Italian offensive on the 9th of March and indeed the ebb and flow of the fighting in the Balkans would lead to the question of troops for Greece being repeatedly revisited, practically until the conclusion of Operation Marita [5].
This offensive provoked some apprehension in London, but it proved to be an abject failure for the Italians. The initial assault failed and a flanking attack on the 11th was equally unsuccessful. The Italians introduced fresh troops but by the 15th they were forced to shut the offensive down having gained no ground [6].
If any British diplomat expected that this would improve the morale of the Greeks and make the bad news they had to share more palatable they would be disappointed. The Greeks were fully aware by this time that the Yugoslavs were coming under pressure from the Germans to sign the Tripartite Pact and grant transit rights to the Germans. If the Yugoslavs capitulated to these demands it would massively extend the front the Greeks had to defend, not to mention the threat from the Bulgarian border and leave them facing forces that had proven themselves far more capable than their Italian counterparts.
The Greeks may have hoped that news of Yugoslavia signing the Tripartite Pact on the 25th of March would persuade the British to reconsider their position on sending troops, it simply reinforced opposition to the idea and the coup that overthrew the Yugoslav government on the 27th did nothing to change anyone’s mind. Dill consulted with his subordinates and presented the conclusion that holding Greece in the event of attacks from Yugoslavia would require the deployment of as much as twenty divisions and this was simply impractical barring completely denuding Egypt and compromising the defence of the home islands. An amphibious assault across the Channel may have been discounted but some sort of attempt at an airborne coup de main was still being taken seriously. The Greeks would continue to receive supplies, and measures would be taken to shore up the defences on Crete, but even though the matter would still be revisited in cabinet throughout April the Greeks would fight on alone [7].
This seemed like a success for Italian strategy, though they would have been far less happy to learn how badly Balbo’s plan for the attack on Egypt had been compromised. Nonetheless when the 10th Army finally launched their invasion of Egypt on the 5th of April things seemed to go well at first, and with the opening of Operation Marita there seemed to be a light at the end of the tunnel for Mussolini, though it would soon turn out this was the eponymous oncoming train [8].
[1] So yes, the Greeks have been getting more British equipment, but most of it is hardly the newest and as mentioned before a fair bit is US Army surplus and the Greeks are not feeling valued.
[2] As will become clear when the TL covers Iraq, Syria and Iran Wavell is far less confident about the British position than O’Connor and this will not go over well in London.
[3] So LRPG rather than LRDG here but still the same sort of derring do.
[4] It’s one thing to reluctantly go along with sending troops to Greece when the Italians seem all but beaten, quite another to do so when they are ominously massing on the Egyptian border so Dill and Pound win fight over sending troops to Greece.
[5] At this point the British still haven’t quite grasped how shockingly bad the Italian forces really are, assuming that the Italians have concentrated the best of their forces in Egypt, which they have to a degree, but they are islands in a sea of ineptitude.
[6] Skimming over this since this is basically the OTL Italian March offensive, basically another embarrassing Italian failure.
[7] That 20 division estimate was made in OTL, but somehow never shared with the War Cabinet. So bad news for Greece, but what of Crete? A multi part answer to that question will be forthcoming.
[8] And there will be not one, but several multi-parters covering Egypt and Libya.
There is the caveat that some French political figures (if not many) actually were pretty consistently worried of Germany since pretty much 1931. However they were not the political factions that ruled France in the critical years (we had actual pacifists and disarmament advocates in 1931-early 34, 1935 and 1936) and rearmament was too late and initially too badly organized (yet advocated since 1930-31) to intervene without Britain. But the biggest problem by far is that depending on Britain was deeply entrenched in the thinking of most political elites (Weygand, on the other hand, was of the opinion that the UK was too unreliable by this point).
Just to say that actual appeasement was not as popular in France as it was in the UK, but the "wrong" faction was running the show.
I now think the the critical period for France was 1930-34, not even 34-36 by the way.
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I suspect any extra military efforts in that era would most likely have gone into Maginot, though.
Bougnas,
Is there any chance you could elaborate on the French faction(s) that were concerned about Germany as early as 1931?
Thanks in advance, Matthew.
A much earlier end to appeasement in France would focus as much on increased/improved training as equipment.
IIRC compulsory service had been cut to 18 months because of the Great Depression while the Germans would extend it to 3 years (to the severe detriment of the economy.) It’s not really a surprise that the Germans were able to perform better in 1940 because the French were still trying to train their soldiers to the standard required while simultaneously arming and fielding millions of men.
IIRC compulsory service had been cut to 18 months because of the Great Depression while the Germans would extend it to 3 years (to the severe detriment of the economy.) It’s not really a surprise that the Germans were able to perform better in 1940 because the French were still trying to train their soldiers to the standard required while simultaneously arming and fielding millions of men.
Garrison
Donor
Well obviously this very much focused on the British but there will be updates on Barbarossa, and its effect elsewhere, once we reach the summer and autumn of 1941. That will be a while as there is the rest of the Balkans, Middle East and Crete to come, as well as the opening moves in Egypt and a detour to the Denmark Strait.
As HappyChappy wrote, any extra funding in the 30s would have mostly been intended to purchase new equipment, improving training or accepting more conscripts. For example, accelerating the development of production of vehicles intended for the mechanized units per Weygand's plan of 1930, which led to the DLMs (3 formed by 1940 compared to 8 intended).
The Maginot line had already been funded in the late 20s and extra funding for it was mostly intended for the occasional reinforcement or to cover cost overruns, but it was generally felt that it didn't need further improvements.
Mostly high-ranking officers (Weygand, Corap, Pétain) and the hardliner faction of the French right and centre-right, such as André Tardieu, Paul Reynaud and a minority in the Democratic Alliance.
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Several British political figures (Churchill unsurprisingly amongst them) were making a push for rearmament to try and give the League of Nations some teeth for enforcing peace in 1936, as far as I understand it - and then the Abdication Crisis hit and the UK (Churchill especially included) apparently lost all interest in anything else much.
So the Baldwin and Chamberlain policies of letting other countries be thrown under the German steamroller regardless of treaties and past obligations are being resumed, whilst the British look out for keeping hold of their own Imperial conquests and puppet territories. I'm sure that's being noted very publicly that way by isolationists in the United States (and for that matter being noted for different reasons in Berlin, too, giving Hitler the confidence to go ahead with the Russia invasion.)
On a different note did the Germans take the Channel Islands in this timeline, as they did in the original timeline, or were they too exhausted after the fighting in France to make the parachute drops? (Edit: It makes a difference to where the frontline is in The Channel, and presumably to running supplies to resistance groups in France. (Further Edit: Also to what resources Hitler has available for building the 'Atlantic Wall' elsewhere later on if he's not fortifying the heck out of Jersey, Guernsey, etc.))
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Garrison
Donor
Well given the British are facing an imminent invasion of Egypt and a lot of people, especially in the USA, are expecting Germany to go for round two against Britain come the spring its a sensible move and lets be honest once the Germans drop the hammer with Marita I think its going to be fairly obvious that nothing was going to help the Greeks. I'm sure the Isolationists will still complain but Lend-Lease is going to be through by the time it becomes obvious the British aren't sending troops at all, remember it isn't really a settled issue basically up until the end the fighting in Greece. At the same time Hitler will feel able to concentrate on the USSR, which is going to be awkward for the Italians in due course. Should also be remembered that Rommel is currently a POW ITTL.
Oh I am well aware of the ridiculous amount of resources spent fortifying the Channel Islands. The British still decided they were indefensible and they were taken by the Germans, mostly to try and increase the political pressure on the British government.
Oddly Chamberlain was calling for harsh action against Germany in 1936, mostly because of Nazi threats to default on loans, but it all got smoothed over with a remarkably generous set of terms being granted to the Germans.
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As Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1936, it was presumably part of Neville Chamberlain's job description at that time to insist that those who owed the UK money crawled over broken glass on their hands and knees if necessary to make repayments and help to balance the UK budget...
Garrison
Donor
Yeah, it just provides such a contrast. At the end of the day excepting the true monsters like Hitler and Stalin the more you look into the actions and character of people like Chamberlain the harder it is to conveniently pigeonhole them.
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The Germans demonstrated in the original timeline that the Channel Islands could be made very much defensible...
The problem for the Germans was that having turned them into almost invincible fortresses they were unable to use them to project power in any meaningful way, except to make occasional raids on the Allied rear areas in France once the Allies had liberated most of France and were moving on elsewhere.
The Allies simply bypassed them and arranged safe passage for the occasional Red Cross supplies ship. (Edit: Minus the Red Cross supplies ships, the Allies in the original timeline did the same to a number of Imperial Japanese island positions in the Pacific...)
Garrison
Donor
Well they could be made defensible, but only with years of construction and a massive commitment of troops, neither of which the British had available in 1940, and of course as you point out they could be easily bypassed, which applies to troops moving either direction across the channel.