Did Britain’s “Ten-Year Rule” in the 1920s encourage appeasement through 1939?

Did Britain’s “Ten-Year Rule” in the 1920s significantly encourage appeasement through 1939?

  • Yes

    Votes: 9 34.6%
  • No

    Votes: 17 65.4%

  • Total voters
    26

raharris1973

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Did Britain’s “Ten-Year Rule” in the 1920s encourage appeasement through 1939?

Churchill put the rule into effect in 1919. He argued it should be continued as an assumption in 1928.

The ten year rule was not something the British government held to very far into the 1930s. It was abandoned in March 1932, after the Manchuria incident, but before Hitler's rise to power or Italy's Abyssinia invasion.

On the one hand, it made an optimistic assumption about the future. On the other hand, most of the time it was championed, optimistic assumptions were pretty justifiable. On the other other hand, Britain did find itself at war not right at ten years after abandoning the rule, but at 7 and a half years. Britain was actually under threat at sea and in its airspace about 8 and quarter years after the rule was dropped.

So without the rule, might British rearmament have been somewhat more advanced by crucial years like 1936, 1938, 1939 and 1940?

Was Churchill in being a rearmament hawk in the 1930s just getting hoist on his own petard, struggling to undo the fiscal conservatism he himself had imposed?

Or even without an explicit rule (which Balfour opposed in the first place) would spending trends have been the same as OTL?

Or if spending trends had changed, would it necessarily been for the better, or been spent on platforms becoming obsolete by the time they were needed? Would Britain have lacked any of the surge capacity it used in the late 1930s and 1940s without the rule?

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Ten Year Rule was a British government guideline, first adopted in August 1919, that the armed forces should draft their estimates "on the assumption that the British Empire would not be engaged in any great war during the next ten years".[1]

The suggestion for the rule came from Winston Churchill, who in 1919 was Secretary of State for War and Air. Former Prime Minister Lord Balfour unsuccessfully argued to the Committee of Imperial Defence, which adopted the rule, that "nobody could say that from any one moment war was an impossibility for the next ten years ... we could not rest in a state of unpreparedness on such an assumption by anybody. To suggest that we could be nine and a half years away from preparedness would be a most dangerous suggestion."[2]

In 1928 Churchill, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, successfully urged the Cabinet to make the rule self-perpetuating, and hence it was in force unless specifically countermanded. In 1931 the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald wanted to abolish the Ten Year Rule because he thought it unjustified based on the international situation. This was bitterly opposed by the Foreign Secretary Arthur Henderson who succeeded in keeping the rule.[3]

There were cuts in defence spending as a result of this rule, with defence spending going down from £766 million in 1919–20, to £189 million in 1921–22, to £102 million in 1932.[4] In April 1931 the First Sea Lord, Sir Frederick Field, claimed in a report to the Committee of Imperial Defence that the Royal Navy had declined not only in relative strength compared to other Great Powers but "owing to the operation of the 'ten-year-decision' and the clamant need for economy, our absolute strength also has ... been so diminished as to render the fleet incapable, in the event of war, of efficiently affording protection to our trade". Field also claimed that the navy was below the standard required for keeping open Britain's sea communications during wartime and that if the navy moved to the East to protect the Empire there would not be enough ships to protect the British Isles and its trade from attack and that no port in the entire British Empire was "adequately defended".[5]

The Ten Year Rule was abandoned by the Cabinet on 23 March 1932, but this decision was countered with: "this must not be taken to justify an expanding expenditure by the Defence Services without regard to the very serious financial and economic situation" which the country was in due to the Great Depression.[6][7]
 
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Ian_W

Banned
No.

If anything, Britain rearming the way it did meant it avoided having large amounts of obsolescent crap.

Without France and Poland on side, Britain can't do anything in 1938.
 
I think the rule had two major linked negative consequences. Firstly there was the psychological one that lead to a lack of focus and attention to war planning outside the military. Secondly, the rule meant that stocks and industrial capacity could both be run down as there would be 10 years to rebuild. The rule probably made sense in 1919 but its perpetuation had significant consequences both through accumulated rundowns and as really this meant war was thought to be incredibly unlikely, since everyone knew the rule would probably be renewed the following year, it really meant more than 10 years of peace was expected.

There's evidence that British defence preparations (or lack of them) were part (but only part) of the reason for appeasement in 1936-8 (especially in 1938). There's also evidence that the first year or two of British rearmament after the rule was abandoned was spent rebuilding capacity and reserves rather than adding to front line strength. These had been rundown as unnecessary for both minor wars and for prestige but necessary for major war. So it is possible that not making the rule permanent would have accelerated British rearmament by a year or two, but the cuts may have happened anyway or the start of rearmament may have been delayed over OTL because the British felt in a better position and needed the Japanese attack on China and the collapse of the disarmament conference to change their thinking.

Overall I think the rule itself probably didn't matter as much as the reason it was adopted. If the non-adoption of the rule was accompanied by higher defence spending then appeasement becomes somewhat less likely (but only somewhat). If non-adoption was accompanied by a stronger alliance with France then appeasement becomes significantly less likely.
 
The Ten Year rule turned out to be entirely accurate between 1919 and 1929, and was only inaccurate between 1929 and when it was scrapped in 1932. It it prevented the British from running their economy into the ground buying lots of crap that would have been obsolete when the war came.
 
I think the rule had two major linked negative consequences. Firstly there was the psychological one that lead to a lack of focus and attention to war planning outside the military.

I think the casuality is opposite. The British Empire and Europe suffered serious manpower and financial losses in WWI, the UK psyhe in 1919 was war waery and demand restriction to spending on military. Pacifism was widespread and it would be political suicide to support expansion of the Armed Forces.
 
I think the casuality is opposite. The British Empire and Europe suffered serious manpower and financial losses in WWI, the UK psyhe in 1919 was war waery and demand restriction to spending on military. Pacifism was widespread and it would be political suicide to support expansion of the Armed Forces.

I think my post is consistent with what you're saying in that the effect of not having the 10 year rule depends on why it wasn't there. I'd agree that an attitude to armed force was behind the rule. However, I think the rule did help to justify ignoring military planning, and without it higher military focus within government is at least possible as major war is acknowledged as possible.
 
Appeasement was a necessary evil due to the underspending on defence by successive Governments of all political stripes. Yes Churchill instigated the 10 year rule in 1919 and at the time it was a reasonable assumption considering the 'War to end all wars' had only just finished. To blame everything on Churchill is way over simplistic.
Politically the British Government was committed to the Geneva disarmament talks and would not rearm whilst a possibility of such a treaty existed, Couple to that the British Treasury utter refusal to release funds or disrupt normal trade for increased defense spending.
So in mid 1938 Chamberlain really was playing politics with the stack firmly stacked against him. Although the cost to the Czech people was horrific the delay in nearly a year for the start of the conflict was invaluable to Britain in terms of re-armament.
 

Ian_W

Banned
Appeasement was a necessary evil due to the underspending on defence by successive Governments of all political stripes. Yes Churchill instigated the 10 year rule in 1919 and at the time it was a reasonable assumption considering the 'War to end all wars' had only just finished. To blame everything on Churchill is way over simplistic.
Politically the British Government was committed to the Geneva disarmament talks and would not rearm whilst a possibility of such a treaty existed, Couple to that the British Treasury utter refusal to release funds or disrupt normal trade for increased defense spending.
So in mid 1938 Chamberlain really was playing politics with the stack firmly stacked against him. Although the cost to the Czech people was horrific the delay in nearly a year for the start of the conflict was invaluable to Britain in terms of re-armament.

Everything in that post is inaccurate.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/defence-policy-1933-1939.htm is the actual cabinet papers.

1934 (ie McDonald government) http://filestore.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pdfs/small/cab-23-80-cc-42-34-10.pdf

Here is a quote from it

"(g) As regards Conclusion (f) of CP.-265 (.54),
to take note of the technical and. financial
considerations outlined by the Chancellor
of the Exchequer at the Meeting and
summarised above in regard, to the accelera
tion of the Air Force Programme. In view,
however, of the gravity of the position.
to approve the proposed acceleration
of the Programme, so as to provide the
22 Squadrons for Home Defence and 3
Squadrons for the Fleet Air Arm in two
years time"
 
It is some years since I studied the interwar cabinet papers in any detail but I would beg to differ on your interpretation. I quote from the same cabinet paper;-

"In regard to (2) it was pointed out that a discussion was involved of as grave a nature as any taken since the war. by inviting the observations or views of the German Government on the facts. we might be taking the first steps towards resumption of general disarmament discussions with Germany."

There follows a discussion of the financial restraints on expansion and the ability, particularly of the Air Force to expand at any greater speed without wasting resources and money.
Just look at the number of air force expansion schemes proposed in this period, then adopted, as far as I am aware not one was actually achieved. Talk in cabinet is all very well, time your announcements to coincide with commons debates, political maneuvering. what counts is what you actually achieve in in reality the spending shackles were not really released until around mid 1936 AFAIK.
 

Ian_W

Banned
. what counts is what you actually achieve in in reality the spending shackles were not really released until around mid 1936 AFAIK.

This might be related to neither the Spitfire nor the Hurricane being ready for production until then ...
 
with Blenheims, Battles, Hanpdens, Defiants, Wellingtons, Masters, Wittleys, Oxfords, Ansons, Tiger Moths, et al being ordered in large numbers I think that saying increased expenditure was waiting on the Hurricane and Spitfire is a case of the 'Tail Wagging' the dog. Also Orders for both Hurricane and Spitfire were placed in advance of anticipated production. Even then to speed things up Hawkers Jumped the gun by starting work on jigs etc. even before they had an order. The treasury really was a major obstruction probably as late as the Munich crisis.
 
It is unrealistic to expect democracy's to spend big until really threatened by an external force. Every penny spent on defence isn't being spent on education or services that the people demand in times of peace. So to argue they should have spent more earlier is using hindsight to cloud the reality that until 1938 war was not seen as a certainty and the German demands to unite the German people's as not unreasonable.

What surprises me is that so much was spent pre Munich.
 
Any British politician who read and understood Mien Kanpf would have known that whilst Hitler ruled Germany another Great War was inevitable, not if, just when.
 
Any British politician who read and understood Mien Kanpf would have known that whilst Hitler ruled Germany another Great War was inevitable, not if, just when.

It's not reading Mien Kanpf that's the problem, it's a western politician believing that Hitler was still serious 10+ years after it was written.

Throughout the 20's and 30's there was a feeling in Germany and the world that Hitler would mature as a politician and distance himself from his youthful revolutionary rhetoric. There where plenty of signs early on in his premiership with examples like his rejection of the brown shirts and cozying up to big business to cast doubts on the validity/relevance of his earlier writings and speeches.
 
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