Europe During the Repudiation of Versailles (1933-1942)
"This is not a peace. It is an armistice for twenty years."
-Ferdinand Foch, 28 June 1919
The Treaty of Versailles, signed on 28 June 1919, attempted to create an enduring peace in Europe after the massive loss of life and destruction caused by the First World War. While generally popular among the victorious Allies, the Treaty had its detractors. Some, such as Supreme Allied Commander Ferdinand Foch, argued that the peace was too lenient on Germany. In Germany, many politicians garnered support by attacking the Treaty as unfair to Germany, including the leader of the Nazi Party, Adolf Hitler. Despite these detractors, the geopolitical order established by the Treaty of Versailles avoided a serious challenge for nearly 14 years, until 1933, when Adolf Hitler was elected the Chancellor of Germany.
On 23 March 1933, the German Reichstag passed the
Ermächtigungsgesetz (Enabling Act), handing Adolf Hitler dictatorial powers. In addition to establishing a totalitarian state, Hitler used these dictatorial powers to begin undoing the terms of the Treaty of Versailles one-by-one. On 13 October 1933, Germany withdrew from the League of Nations. On 13 January 1935, the Saarland Territory, by a 90% margin voted to unite with Germany. In March, Hitler announced that Germany would expand its army to six times the limit allowed by Versailles. In June, the British permitted the Germans to increase tonnage limits of the Germany Navy beyond those stipulated by Versailles. On 7 March 1936, Germany remilitarized the Rhineland. On 12 March 1938, Hitler announced the the
Anschluss (Annexation) of Austria. Soon after, Hitler began making demands on Czechoslovakia to cede the region of Sudetenland, populated by ethnic Germans. On 29 September 1938, Adolf Hitler, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, and Italian Dictator Benito Mussolini, met in Munich to determine the fate of the Sudetenland. Influenced by assurances from Hitler that the Sudetenland was his Germany’s territorial demand, the four-power conference allowed Germany to annex the territory. Upon returning from Munich, Neville Chamberlain confidently announced that he had obtained “peace in our time.” On 15 March 1939, this illusory expectation of peace was shattered when Hitler violated the Munich accord by occupying the rest of Czechoslovakia. When Hitler began making threats against Poland, demanding the return of Danzig and the Polish Corridor, the United Kingdom and France issued a declaration guaranteeing Polish Independence. Within months, Europe would find itself at war again.
Before undertaking his invasion of Poland, Hitler dispatched his foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to Moscow to conclude a neutrality pact with the Soviets. This pact, the Molotov-Ribbentrop included secret provisions to divide Central Europe between Germany and the Soviet Union. Hitler had hoped that the pact would have forced the United Kingdom and France to accept his impending invasion of Poland as a
fait accompli. On 1 September 1939, Germany invaded Poland, which prompted the United Kingdom and France to declare war on Germany two days later. While Poland fought valiantly, the country was quickly overrun by the Germans and (from 17 September 1939 on) the Soviets. In the Fourth Partition of Poland, the Soviet Union annexed half of the country (incorporated into the Byelorussian and Ukrainian SSRs), Germany a quarter, and scraps by Slovakia and Lithuania. The remainder of the country became an occupation zone under German control known as the “General Government” – Poland had been erased from the map.
For the next half-year, there was minimal combat between the Western Allies and Germany (hence this period of the war is often dubbed the “Phony War”). The Soviet Union nevertheless took advantage of the conflict in the West to force border corrections (though at great cost to the Red army) with Finland in the Winter War. To secure shipments of Iron Ore from Sweden, Germany launched Operation Weserübung, the invasion of neutral Denmark and Norway, on 9 April 1940. Denmark fell to German forces within 6 hours. Norway, buoyed by allied assistance, held out longer – until developments elsewhere forced the United Kingdom and France to abandon their deployments to Norway.
Seeking to score a quick and decisive victory in the West in light of Germany’s perilous strategic position, on 10 May 1940 Hitler ordered
Fall Gelb (Case Yellow) – a surprise offensive through the Ardennes. This battle would turn out to be the decisive campaign of the Second World War. The main force of Germany’s Panzer forces advanced through the lightly defended Ardennes forest and broke through the French defensive lines are Sedan. From there, the Panzers turned towards the channel coast, in a “sickle cut” maneuver, to cut off the bulk of the French and British army (which were mostly deployed in Belgium) from the rest of France. By 20 May 1940, advance German units had reached the English Channel, and attempts by the French and British to counterattack the German pincer failed. On 23 May 1940, British General Lord Gort ordered the British Expeditionary Force to retreat towards the Channel coast in an attempt to evacuate his army. However, the following day, the German Army captured the port of Dunkirk, which forced the British to try to make an escape via the Belgian port of Ostend. However, the Germans would capture Ostend before the British Expeditionary Force could arrive – sealing of all avenues of retreat. By the end of May, nearly the entire British Expeditionary Force (the bulk of the United Kingdom’s regular forces in Europe), and the bulk of the French Army (including its best units) were in German POW camps. Clearing pockets of resistance forced Germany to delay
Fall Rot (Case Red), the invasion of France, a few days but the offensive got under way by 8 June 1940. France resisted the German invader as well as it could, but with the balance of forces decisively in Germany’s favor (aggravated by Italian entry into the War on the side of Germany), France was forced to sign an armistice with Germany on 24 June 1940. As someone deeply concerned with symbolism, Hitler forced the French delegation to sign the Armistice in Compiègne, in the same rail car and location where the armistice that ended the First World War had been signed. Hitler had planned on conducting a private visit to Paris the subsequent day but was forced to return to Berlin to attend to matters of state in response to the Soviet occupation of the Baltics and Bessarabia.
Hitler (who had always wanted to visit Paris due to his hobby of architecture), returned to the French Capital on 27 June 1940 to attend a Wehrmacht Victory Parade (similar to the one held in Warsaw). Towards the end of the parade, German Officer Fritz-Dietlof von der Schulenburg approached Hitler’s reviewing stand. Pulling out a pistol, Schulenburg shot Hitler 5 times before being gunned down by Hitler’s bodyguard (who had been far more concerned about a potential assassination plot by the French Resistance, and severely discounted the potential of an assassination from within the ranks of the German Army). Adolf Hitler, the man who had destroyed the Versailles Treaty and returned Germany to the status of Great Power – was pronounced dead shortly after. In 1939, Hitler had decreed that Hermann Göring, the President of the Reichstag and Supreme Commander of the
Luftwaffe, was to be his successor. While many foreign observers predicted that the Nazi state would devolve into infighting with various factions jostling for power now that Hitler dead, Göring assumed control rather seamlessly (with various factions, from the army, to the party believing that Göring being in charge of Germany was preferable to the risk that another faction besides themselves would seize control). After overseeing Hitler’s funeral in Linz (soon thereafter renamed “Hitlerstadt”), Göring – as someone who always found the risks of launching and undertaking wars to not be worth the risk (due in large part to not do anything that would impact his ability to live off of the largesse of the state) – soon made his first major move as Führer of Germany.
On 11 July 1940, Hermann Göring made his first speech to the Reichstag. After delivering a powerful eulogy of his predecessor, Göring made a peace overture to the British who he knew were listening. Göring offered very generous terms to the United Kingdom – offering a peace without any sort of financial or territory indemnity, nor military limitations. Referencing his predecessor’s desire to undo the Versailles order, Göring characterized his peace terms as “everything the Treaty of Versailles was not – a fair and equitable peace.”
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, trusting Göring’s word as little as he had trusted Hitler’s word, privately resolved to continue the war against Germany. However, Churchill’s hand was forced by Göring’s peace offer. Many within Churchill’s War Cabinet, such as Lord Halifax had argued for investigating potential peace terms ever since the British Expeditionary Force had been captured in May. Pessimistic reports regarding the United Kingdom’s ability to continue to prosecute the war from General Ironside and Imperial General Staff only served to strengthen the peace-seeking faction. On 14 July 1940, David Lloyd George (a member of the War Cabinet since June, whom Churchill erroneously considered to be a close ally) led a cabinet revolt against the Churchill in an attempt to force him to explore terms with Germany. In response to this lack of confidence, Churchill tendered his resignation, and Lord Halifax replaced him as Prime Minister. Halifax immediately sent a delegation to Germany to discuss terms – and an armistice was concluded shortly thereafter. On 21 October 1940 – a peace between Germany and the United Kingdom was signed. In effect, the British had signed a White Peace with Germany, only being obligated to expel the governments-in-exile hosted in London (most of which would leave for America – with the exception of the Belgians, which returned to join King Leopold III in Belgium to negotiate a settlement with the Germans). The Germans tacitly acquiesced to continued British presence in Iceland and the Faroe Islands, which became independent of Denmark (over the objections of Copenhagen) in 1941. Throughout the remainder of the 1940, peace agreements were concluded with France, Belgium, and Denmark – with resulted in some territorial indemnities to Germany (but less than many had feared). In the Netherlands and Norway, Germany concluded peace with puppet regimes they established. The Second World War was over.
1941 would see Europe’s borders get re-ordered once again, with the Third Balkan War between Yugoslavia and a coalition of Italy, Hungary, and Bulgaria resulting in the dissolution of the former. While relations between Germany and the Soviet Union worsened in 1941 (with the Soviets accusing the Germans of stationing troops in Finland and not properly compensating the Soviet Union for food and raw material shipments), the two powers remained at peace. The Soviet Union, still reeling from Stalin’s purges, was in no position to fight Germany as it rearmed, so Germany’s transgressions were allowed to stand for the moment. In Germany, many Nazis advocated invading the Soviet Union in 1941, contending that the peace with the United Kingdom presented Germany with an unprecedented opportunity to invade the Soviet Union without worrying about fighting on two fronts. Göring was initially receptive to this idea, but as the date of invasion neared wavered on multiple occasions, delaying Operation Dortmund (the planned invasion of the Soviet Union) a number of times in 1941 for a variety of reasons, before postponing it to 1942. As 15 May 1942 approached (the planned invasion date), Göring again wavered, as intelligence reports of Soviet rearmament unnerved Göring and convinced him to delay Dortmund once again. As the strategic balance between Germany and the Soviet Union continued to shift in the latter’s favor, Dortmund was postponed again, and again, until it was shelved indefinitely. By the end of 1942, Stalin (while still unconvinced about the offensive capabilities of the Soviet Army) was sufficiently satisfied with the defensive capabilities of the Soviet military to resist a German invasion. Accordingly, he demanded Germany withdraw from Finland and pay its deferred loan payments to the Soviet Union immediately. Göring flatly refused, prompting Stalin to cancel all ongoing economic and diplomatic agreements with Germany.
The Cold War had begun.