AH Challenge- After armistice day 1918, Britain decides on and sticks w/ a policy of lockstep cooperation with France?

[kham_coc]

A least communist Germany avoids the holocaust, but Soviet-style purges would not be good either.
This will leave Poland in a very venerable position, but it is hard to see it being worse than OTL.

It would be - a Germany that signs up to be a junior partner to the ussr won't lose ww2 and will unquestionably have the negotiating power to reacquire 1914, that along with the soviet slice leaves precious little of Poland left abd that's a best case scenario.
The worst case is either takes all of it and then there might not be any polish speakers left in Central Europe.

In regards to the question, it's hard because French policy fundamentally did not make sense, the post versailes security order was created by the US (now absent) and with the vacuum of Soviet and German strength.
France and the UK couldn't have maintained it by themselves.
It could never last, hell it was effectively designed not to last, see Austria.
French policy was effectively idiocy induced by paranoia, so to get the uk to go along, some lead paint is required.

 

[BELFAST]

It would be - a Germany that signs up to be a junior partner to the ussr won't lose ww2 and will unquestionably have the negotiating power to reacquire 1914, that along with the soviet slice leaves precious little of Poland left abd that's a best case scenario.
The worst case is either takes all of it and then there might not be any polish speakers left in Central Europe.

In regards to the question, it's hard because French policy fundamentally did not make sense, the post versailes security order was created by the US (now absent) and with the vacuum of Soviet and German strength.
France and the UK couldn't have maintained it by themselves.
It could never last, hell it was effectively designed not to last, see Austria.
French policy was effectively idiocy induced by paranoia, so to get the uk to go along, some lead paint is required.

maybe.
There is also the effect on the Spanish civil war.
If the communists win there the allies will start to get very nervous.

 

[BELFAST]

Then there is the possibility that Trotsky supporters are the communist who take power in Germany.
Stalin would not like that.

 

[AltoRegnant]

The communists never recovered from the spartacist revolt to my knowledge, and if we're assuming France and Britain putting their foot down on a government that triest to rearm we're looking at a post spartacist Germany. So I dont see germany going red.

In addition, it won't change their geopolitical interests as being divergent from russia. Germany/Prussia will basically always want a controlling share of Poland- just like russia, and frankly a strong russia is a threat to german security. There's a reason Germany chose the Austrians, or why basically every german military saw russia as a threat up until 91

 

[Bougnas]

There is the other question is what happens to a Germany that is prevented from reaming.
Now Stalin has the largest army in Europe and a more or less defenceless Germany in the centre of Europe.
There is the possibility of a communist rising in Germany possibly with Soviet assistance.
Now the main problem in Europe is the spread of communism instead of national socialism.
France has its own problem with communism too in that period.

Outside of the fact that a lot of the Soviet rearmament was in response to German rearmament, it's pretty clear that not keeping the Germans down made things worse against the Soviets anyway, at least for a time. It wiped out the entire Eastern European defense and kept the Western one crippled for decades.
The entirety of Europe minus Germany and with unscathed British, French and Italian military-industrial complexes and economies (and growing Polish, Czech and Yugoslavian ones) arguably outweigh the benefits of having sizeable West-German and US forces by the 70s as far as containing the USSR goes.

 

[H.Flashman(VC)]

I don't know if anyone here has read the book A line in the sand by James Barr. But my impression from that book is that in the Middle East France and Britain both did their uttermost best to make each others rule in their respective mandates as difficult as possible by giving clandestine support to any rebelious groups there. This policy , that worked throughout the whole interbellum, must have had a detrimental impact on the relationship and collaboration in other areas.

 

[naraic]

I wonder if Anglo French cooperation would have changed washington naval treaty at all.

Historically France wanted a bigger allocation than Japan, the right to build new capital ships and superiority to Italy. They got to keep some semidreadnoughts which enabled them to claim superiority to Italy but in terms of replacement tonnage both had the same allowance.

 

[raharris1973]

I don't know if anyone here has read the book A line in the sand by James Barr. But my impression from that book is that in the Middle East France and Britain both did their uttermost best to make each others rule in their respective mandates as difficult as possible by giving clandestine support to any rebelious groups there. This policy , that worked throughout the whole interbellum, must have had a detrimental impact on the relationship and collaboration in other areas.

Which specific groups did the two help against each other?

I know the British clients, the Hashemites of Feisal, tried to rule the Syrian Kingdom, and the British didn't physically interpose to try to stop him. But they let the French beat him back, and made it clear they were not grabbing Syria for him.

The French verbally whined and moaned and accused Britain of taking too much of the Middle East during the whole war and post-war era, but I don't know who they actually aided to undermine the British. [The French sort of asserted they had a claim to Palestine and Mosul, northern Iraq, and that it was a great concession on their part to "allow" Britain to run them] Their complaints rang hollow since they weren't doing the same wartime labor in the region as the British but they countered they were doing more of the labor on the west front from the common cause.

The French gave up on the terms of Sevres and made peace with Turkey while Lloyd George was still trying to back the Greeks and beat down the Turks.

After the Arab Revolt in Palestine, the anti-British Mufti of Jerusalem took refuge in Syria. This could well have been thumbing the nose at the British, or, just taking a troublesome exile off their hands so the British wouldn't have to deal with a messy trial, imprisonment or execution?

After the British occupation of Vichy Syria in WWII, Britain supported Syrian and Lebanese independence, so France, Vichy nor French, could be sore it didn't get unqualified British support.

Obviously part of a British lockstep policy with France in Europe would have to be a narrowing of any gaps or contradictions between positions of the two empires in the Middle East, and French reciprocal respect for British interests.

With some prioritization of triage and prioritization of interests that shouldn't be impossible. The competing stakes between the two in the Middle East, were over the not-so oil rich Levant, rather than the Persian Gulf, so the stakes were exceedingly low. Their games against each other were quite silly. For France, contesting for things they had no hope of getting that weren't worth much anyway, and for Britain, contesting for things that weren't worth much.

 

[H.Flashman(VC)]

Which specific groups did the two help against each other?

If i remember correctly the French certainly delivered weapons to the Haganah. But both also harbered wanted Arab rebels from the other side like the Mufti you mentioned.

 

[raharris1973]

If i remember correctly the French certainly delivered weapons to the Haganah. But both also harbered wanted Arab rebels from the other side like the Mufti you mentioned.

Arms for the Haganah - when - interwar? postwar?

Is it overall a good, recommended book?

 

[naraic]

Which specific groups did the two help against each other?

I know the British clients, the Hashemites of Feisal, tried to rule the Syrian Kingdom, and the British didn't physically interpose to try to stop him. But they let the French beat him back, and made it clear they were not grabbing Syria for him.

I think the main problem was that local clients didn't respect borders.

Like the British set up Hashemite kingdoms in transjordan and Iraq but the Hashemites wanted syria. Arming Hashemite Jordan and Iraq saw pro Hashemite groups in syria armed.

 

[MichaelWest]

You are forced to deal with a historic and not entirely dead antagonism between France and Britain, the old British fear of being entangled upon the continent or in turn being held hostage by it. This drew the British away from alliance with Germany but never really made London comfy with being a mere adjunct to Paris's lead. The Conservatives are backing intervention against their rather imperious distaste for the French because it derails the home rule problem of Ireland. Only a narrow cabal in the Liberal Cabinet actually understand and support the alliance with France. Post-war the war left Britain with lots of dead, lots of debt and a badly shaken Empire. Alliance had brought what? German naval threat met in 1912. Russia stalemated since 1905 in Asia, almost given free reign in the Balkans and Straights to undo all the gain of the Crimea War, global trade as the wealthy wave Britain sailed in the doldrums, and on and on. Britain did not as much diverge from France as the post-war path showed just how weakly joined they in fact were. The attempt at neutering Germany left a vacuum France could not fill, impoverished Europe and by extension Britain, and opened Britain up to begging the Americans, alienating the Japanese and being left to face the old Russian threat under a new less rationale leadership hungry for ideological expansion. London needs France to be more than another charity and less of a desperate would be hegemon to mute these pre-war chains that tore open the real shaky ground the two powers found themselves briefly standing firm upon.

 

[raharris1973]

The Conservatives are backing intervention against their rather imperious distaste for the French because it derails the home rule problem of Ireland.

This is the first time I heard of Conservative pro-Entente and anti-German policy leading up to WWI as primarily explained as a diversionary tactic away from the Irish Home Rule issue. Diversionary effects of the war are cited all the time, but diversionary motives, not really.

Very interesting!

Everything else you said does call into question the wisdom of Britain committing (was it overcommitting? war it over-emboldening?) to France, and Russia up to and in 1914. Unfortunately, Britain's fate was to walk into one disaster and then walk into another disaster over learning from the first when being more even-keeled all along might have done nicely.

London needs France to be more than another charity and less of a desperate would be hegemon to mute these pre-war chains that tore open the real shaky ground the two powers found themselves briefly standing firm upon.

In other words Britain wanted France to be some sort of unicorn it was not. And was in denial about the balance of its available partners and threats.

Britain, with France, Belgium, and France's eastern partners, with mutual support and resolve to defend themselves could have deterred and contained Germany, or defeated it at a cost, but one lower than that of WWI, or OTL's WWII, in the middle of the 20th century. Britain needed to stop its policy, pursued since 1923, of trying to discourage the band from getting together. It was a classic balance of power error. By having aligned with the Entente and not really helped avert WWI, and the fought WWI to victory, despite all hazards, Britain's salvation wasn't in zig-zagging away, but in accepting it had made its bed with France and Belgium and needed to stick with them, to pull any weight in the world and contain any fundamental upsets in Europe and the Med.

France, for all its liabilities, had ground forces and continental partnerships of potential use in deterring, testing, slowing down, and wearing down any ill-intending German regime. It may not be what a Britain and Europe living around a Hitler would have wanted, but could have been what it needed. Unfortunately, the British government of the day, and the politically engaged public, didn't have the insight of one of their sons of a later generation:

 

[Jellico]

Here is the challenge - what if after armistice day 1918, Britain decides on and sticks w/ a policy of lockstep cooperation with France on European, indeed global affairs.

It does this, instead of its nearly opposite, OTL policy of running away from commitments to France as much as possible, and always urging France to tone down its commitment to the letter of the Versailles treaty and the precise European territorial status quo set up by Versailles, St. Germain, Trianon, Neuilly & Riga.

Of course, by mid-1939, Britain was back to realignment with France, but the time away from that alignment was costly, and gave the Nazis room to make free gains.

In other words, Britain is consistent with its wartime alliance with France, and its prewar policy toward France since the Entente Cordiale, generally siding with France on international questions.

I'm inspired to start this thread after reviewing threads I started on what *France* could have done post Versailles, or during Versailles, to sustain a more secure position for itself in the decades after 1919 (you know, a future, not leading to the debacle of 1940).

These discussions were had on multiple forums here:

What's the best deal France can make and take at Versailles?

AHC – France sustains its post-Versailles security order for 44 years

AHC – France sustains its post-Versailles security order for 44 years

What's the best deal France can make and take at Versailles?

AHC – France sustains its post-Versailles security order for 44 years

A big conclusion from the discussions was that France *tried* hard to avoid the fate of 1940, but didn't have the weight/strength to do it without British support. The French largely knew this, which was why they were always checking for British approval before standing up for themselves, or anyone else in Europe, against Germany, but the British never gave France approval to stand up against Germany until the spring of 1939.

In those discussions I took British non-cooperation as an unchangeable, mindless force of nature, that France just had to deal with and couldn't do anything to affect.

But here, I am asking if we can plausibly get British leaders, elites, people to walk away from the end of WWI and the armistice with a different set of preferences and lessons, and decide that France is *the* vital partner, strategy has to be co-developed with France, and if France needs support for encircling or containing Germany, it should get it.

In hindsight, the logic of 'stick with France through thick and thin' is pretty good. Who else can Britain stick with? Russia is revolutionary and unavailable. America is too aloof. Japan is too distant to make the big difference in Europe, and America is strong-arming Britain into cutting the alliance anyway. Germany? Germany has some bitterness against Britain and Britain sits on some German old property. Italy - too little strength north of the Alps. The idea, to the extent that British policymakers ever entertained it after WWI, that France was now now *too strong* on the continent and would over-dominate it in league Central European allies like Poland (despite poor Relations with both Germany and Soviet Russia) seems a gross over-estimate of France's ability to domineer and become a menace, especially in hindsight. In retrospect, what Britain and France would have achieved working together was not a new Napoleonic order in Europe, but basically just enough force to hold on to the European status quo by denying Germany and Italy the maneuvering room and oxygen to do wars of conquest through the 1940s.

How could British leaders/government come to this conclusion, implement this policy, what costs would they pay, and what would the results be through the 1940s and beyond?

Britain is the one with the money, is owed loans, has the population and technology. It is the senior partner here. Why should it follow the French lead?

 

[raharris1973]

Britain is the one with the money, is owed loans, has the population and technology. It is the senior partner here. Why should it follow the French lead?

Because in OTL Britain made France follow its lead, and the west was weaker for it. It turned out France's ideas about Germany were more realistic.

In the absence of Britain seeing sense, France should have led from weakness, or its junior role. Realizing that a) using its short-term superiority over Germany would work to contain German for the momentary short-term crisis, or b) in the worst case if it does not, and France is existentially threatened with defeat, Britain, whatever it likes or not, will be compelled to try to prop up or revise France. Britain's *eventual* balance of power logic will compel it, no matter what the priors. Ergo, France gains nothing by deferring to Britain's stated preferences for restraint up front. In case a) works, but then a new crisis with Germany emerges, or Germany tries strengthening itself, apply a) again. The "inevitable" long-term superiority of Germany is dependent on the "long-term" outlook. For those ready to shape their future, the "long-term" is no more than several iterations of "short-terms" strung together in sequence.

 

[MichaelWest]

This is the first time I heard of Conservative pro-Entente and anti-German policy leading up to WWI as primarily explained as a diversionary tactic away from the Irish Home Rule issue. Diversionary effects of the war are cited all the time, but diversionary motives, not really.

Very interesting!

Everything else you said does call into question the wisdom of Britain committing (was it overcommitting? war it over-emboldening?) to France, and Russia up to and in 1914. Unfortunately, Britain's fate was to walk into one disaster and then walk into another disaster over learning from the first when being more even-keeled all along might have done nicely.


In other words Britain wanted France to be some sort of unicorn it was not. And was in denial about the balance of its available partners and threats.

Britain, with France, Belgium, and France's eastern partners, with mutual support and resolve to defend themselves could have deterred and contained Germany, or defeated it at a cost, but one lower than that of WWI, or OTL's WWII, in the middle of the 20th century. Britain needed to stop its policy, pursued since 1923, of trying to discourage the band from getting together. It was a classic balance of power error. By having aligned with the Entente and not really helped avert WWI, and the fought WWI to victory, despite all hazards, Britain's salvation wasn't in zig-zagging away, but in accepting it had made its bed with France and Belgium and needed to stick with them, to pull any weight in the world and contain any fundamental upsets in Europe and the Med.

France, for all its liabilities, had ground forces and continental partnerships of potential use in deterring, testing, slowing down, and wearing down any ill-intending German regime. It may not be what a Britain and Europe living around a Hitler would have wanted, but could have been what it needed. Unfortunately, the British government of the day, and the politically engaged public, didn't have the insight of one of their sons of a later generation:

Having read the Sleepwalkers, I found the foundation stones for the war to be rather different than has been handed us. One thread I pulled was the motivation by the Conservatives to avoid Home Rule and how a foreign adventure could distract from that. Of course that generation of Army officers and Irish Unionists were decimated by the war and their cohorts in the Party rather forgot their desire for war.

Indeed, I think the core post-war issue that London found the peace as crafted left them shackled to France. The age old role of Austria as a mollifier in the Balkans was shattered and gone were so many other aristocracies. The balance tipped into Paris's hands, the exact thing Waterloo had broken! Sadly Versailles was to blame, it tried to sow salt when all it did was fertilize the future.

I am not all together convinced that merely embracing France would have solved things. "Appeasement" needed to come when Germany was being led by Socialists and Liberals, whatever else, the war proved Britain was linked to Europe, leadership there, partnership there, that was how to restore Britain, a lesson merely ignored and then denied as we saw a few more times.

 

[Bougnas]

Relevant: https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/8507?lang=en

A Missed Opportunity?: Britain and the Negotiations for an Anglo-French Alliance in 1921-1922​

 

[kham_coc]

I am not all together convinced that merely embracing France would have solved things. "Appeasement" needed to come when Germany was being led by Socialists and Liberals,

Precisely.

 

[raharris1973]

What economic and political constituencies in both France and Britain and Belgium in 1919 and beyond would have benefitted from a hypothetical "European Coal and Steel Community" along the lines of 1951, or a broader common market along the lines of the 1957 Treaty of Rome? What economic and political constituencies in the three countries would have been most threatened by it and resistant to it?

Broadening it out a little, if someone proposed the Steel and Coal Community, or a broader Economic Community or Customs Union (if that is what was achieved by the '57 treaty) with a founding membership of Britain, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Italy, which groups in each would see themselves as likely winners and likely losers.

If the coalition of self-perceived "winners" could dominate their own domestic objectors and establish such an economic community, could this help keep foreign policies aligned and help keep Italy non-Fascist and parliamentary?

If it were established in the early 1920s, what if the offer of membership were extended to European neutrals, like Netherlands, the Scandinavian countries, and possibly Germany, provided this last one pays its reparations and joins the League?

 

[fasquardon]

How could British leaders/government come to this conclusion, implement this policy, what costs would they pay, and what would the results be through the 1940s and beyond?

Personally, I've always liked the idea of Lloyd George dying of the bout of Spanish flu he caught just before Versailles. The man was a great PM domestically, but I don't rate him highly on the foreign stage.

I am not sure who would replace Lloyd George as PM and in the negotiations if he died, though my money is on Bonar Law, since he is the leader of the largest party in the parliament and the most senior man after Lloyd George in the coalition government. In OTL Bonar Law's brief stint as PM saw a great improvement in Anglo-French relations due to his dispensing with the outright Francophobic policy of Lloyd George. So if Bonar Law is in charge during the Versailles negotiations, there's a chance for a closer relationship to develop during the treaty negotiations, and for a better treaty that leads to a more stable Europe (maybe even a more stable Middle East).

There's also two specific issues that could greatly improve relations if handled differently: Syria and Poland.

In OTL, the British worked very hard to turn all of the Arab parts of the Ottoman Empire into colonies. Including Syria and Northern Iraq which had been in the slice assigned to the French in the Sykes-Picot agreement. This greatly irritated the French and the Americans, as well as the Arabs themselves, set the stage for years of tensions between the British and French in the Middle East, was a major reason for the Americans feeling they'd been used to simply increase British power at the expense of the rest of Europe and of course led to several Arab revolts. If the British didn't push the envelope in Syria, that helps Anglo-French relations in the early 20s. If the British and French were able to agree on allowing an independent Arab state or collection of Arab states in which they shared economic concessions, then everyone could be far happier and the US might be more engaged in maintaining peace in Europe to boot.

On the matter of Poland, in OTL, the British basically thought that Poland was doomed from the start and that the Poles being temporarily successful would only set Europe up for a major destabilization when Poland was inevitably partitioned once again, and so were determined to keep Poland small and weak. By contrast, the French saw the Poles as useful annoying people who if allowed to have some success might keep Germany from focusing entirely on France. The end result was that the British got a Poland that was weak enough to be partitioned if the Germans and Soviets ever worked together, and the French got a Poland that was big enough that the Germans couldn't fight BOTH France and Poland at the same time. We saw how that worked out in OTL of course, but regardless, this argument was also a major element feeding British fears of French hegemony over Europe, as they saw Poland as a way for France to claim more of Europe by stealth. Had Britain and France both agreed that a strong Poland was to their advantage you'd reduce the friction between the British and French at Versailles greatly and reduce opportunities for friction later on, since a major part of the British rapprochement with the Stresemann government in OTL was to give Germany a free hand to "settle things" to the east.

I am not all together convinced that merely embracing France would have solved things. "Appeasement" needed to come when Germany was being led by Socialists and Liberals, whatever else, the war proved Britain was linked to Europe, leadership there, partnership there, that was how to restore Britain, a lesson merely ignored and then denied as we saw a few more times.

Eh. I would argue that appeasement started the moment the post-WW1 economic crisis bit in London and Paris. The Germans started their re-armament efforts while the SDP were still burying murdered Spartacists.

Before the Nazis came to power, it was even going reasonably well. Yes, everyone knew the Germans were cheating the treaty of Versailles in all kinds of ways, and everyone knew that Germany would try to tear a chunk out of Poland down the road, but those were things that the British and French governments of the time could live with so long as things didn't go too far. But it was one thing to appease Gustav Stresemann, it was quite another to appease the reactionary officer class or the Nazis.

Ideally British diplomatic help would butterfly the occupation of the Rhineland or at least resolve it in a way that satisfies France. Addressing the high inflation of the Franc progressively with more constant German reparations instead of the 1928 shock of devaluation and tax increases would allow the French government to focus on other things, which would improve its economic prospects before and after the Great Depression (because devaluation of the Franc won't be as much of a taboo as OTL and the economy and industry outside of the rebuilt regions would get more love) and thus improve its ability to respond to German rearmament and aggressivity.

Hm. British economic assistance during the 20s would make the Great Depression less severe as well. The economic storms of the 20s traumatized the French, and that as well as the UK and US making the pound and dollar reserve currencies while freezing out the French is what made the French go crazy converting all of their currency reserves into gold and sucking up a major portion of the world's gold supply. In addition to the premature slackening of New Deal reforms in the US, that caused the second wave of the great depression in the mid 30s. If the French weren't playing by such a hyper-conservative economic playbook because they feel they have friends who have their back, the second wave of the great depression (assuming there is still a New Deal and Congress still forces Roosevelt to start prematurely ending it) is much less severe, which might greatly stabilize international politics all on its own.

Also, a less hyper-conservative French economic policy means France has more economic growth, meaning they are a better ally for the UK in keeping stability.

Relevant: https://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/8507?lang=en

Nice find!

One of the distractors was the loss of Japan as British client state & then its becoming crossways with British policy. for over a decade rom the mid 1920s Britain was taking a war with Japan as seriously as the US. This drew off attention to Asia/Pacifica and the RN. ie: The Brits were busy monitoring Japanese military radio and fussing with Japans communications codes, but they had near zero understanding of German practice. If Japan remains a Brit client state & stoops frightening the Brit foreign office then maybe more attention is directed at Germany. Ditto for Italy.

The problem with that is that Britain and the Dominions knew the USA was not happy with Japan having an empire in the northeast Pacific and they did not want to be caught in a Japanese-American slap fight. Australia and Canada made some especially vigorous appeals to the UK to ditch Japan, and if the Anglo-Japanese alliance lasts longer, especially in the case where Japan invades China as OTL, then the British are going to be distracted by Australia and Canada trying to get the heck out of the empire.

One of my favourite PODs for greater cooperation is a failed AGNA (obviously this only works from the Mid 30s)

Ohhh. I like!

There is the other question is what happens to a Germany that is prevented from reaming.
Now Stalin has the largest army in Europe and a more or less defenceless Germany in the centre of Europe.
There is the possibility of a communist rising in Germany possibly with Soviet assistance.
Now the main problem in Europe is the spread of communism instead of national socialism.
France has its own problem with communism too in that period.

Until the German re-armament and the very public aim of Hitler to destroy the Soviet Union, the Soviet army wouldn't have even been able to beat Poland.

Stalin's theory of how Communism would take over the world is that capitalism would destroy itself in a series of conflicts over resources and colonies, like high-tech re-runs of WW1. So the plan was to wait for the capitalists to start kicking the stuffing out of each-other again, then re-arm to "liberate" the oppressed workers like vultures swooping on a carcass.

And absent WW2 making Stalin into the man who saved everyone still alive in the Soviet Union from Hitler, once he died the backlash against Stalinism could have been much more severe.

There's no such thing as perfect safety in the world, but the odds are against the Soviet Union being a threat to Europe for a good long while.

Then there is the possibility that Trotsky supporters are the communist who take power in Germany.
Stalin would not like that.

The KDP were pretty well in line with Stalin's directive weren't they?

fasquardon