https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...-entered-rheinland.303985/page-7#post-8638101
For why the French were so reluctant to move without British support, I'd like to repost here an old soc.history post of mine:
James Thomas Emmerson, in his book _The Rhineland Crisis: 7 March 1936_
concluded that Hitler would have resisted the French. Yes, he
acknowledges, several times Hitler was to say subsequently that had the
French marched in, he would have had to beat an ignominious retreat, but
he usually said that to boast about his "nerves of steel", show how much
more daring and wise he was than his diplomats and generals, etc.
(Actually, the generals didn't put up any real opposition. Fritsch said
he agreed that remilitarization of the Rhineland was a necessity, but
evidently had some reservations--he agreed to it only after Hitler assured
him the operation would not result in hostilities. Blomberg had no
objections at all. As for the diplomats, Foreign Minister Neurath
probably expressed personal reservations, but did not challenge the
Fuhrer. Neither Hitler nor Neurath nor the generals thought that France
would act so long as it was clear that the action was not a preparation
for an attack on France--for this reason the number of troops
participating in the remilitarization was limited.) The actual military
orders, Emmerson claims, show that resistance was intended. Moreover,
Hitler's statement to Schuschnigg in 1938, often used to bolster the
theory that Hitler wouldn't resist, actually was that Germany "would
withdraw perhaps 60 kilometers but would still hold the French."
An important fact to remember is that the French army in 1936 had no
strike force capable of marching as far as Mainz, let alone occupying the
entire Rhineland. Nor did it possess a single unit which could be made
instantly combat-ready. To resist militarily, the French required
mobilization, which would take time--and during that time, it would no
doubt be evident how totally isolated the French would be in favoring
force. Moreover, the French army believed that the Rhineland had really
been militarized for a long time--they counted, besides the newly
introduced troops, 30,000 members of the labor service and 30,000 members
of the Landespolizei and other police organizations as combat forces.
They also counted over 200,000 "auxiliaries"--all Germans in the
Rhineland who belonged to such organizations as the SA, SS, and NSKK
(motorized corps of the SA). These, the French believed, would put up a
stiff resistance in familiar terrain, certainly for as long as would be
required for Blomberg to bring in his reinforcements.
Gamelin believed that he could establish a foothold on German soil, but
that his advance would be halted rapidly, both by supply problems and by
the enemy--he counted not only over a million Germans already under arms
but millions of members of pre- and para-military formations, disciplined,
partially trained, and capable of being integrated into fighting units
with reasonable speed. They might only be cannon fodder in the short run,
but eventually the weight of Germany's larger population would tell,
especially since France had no equivalent pool of semi-skilled manpower.
Although it is clear in retrospect that the French overestimated German
military strength, that doesn't mean that an occupation of the Rhineland
would have been a walkover. Hitler was not bluffing. The Aachen, Trier,
and Saarbrucken battalions were under orders, not to flee, but to pull
back into previously prepared positions, where their job was to "halt the
enemy advance" for as long as possible before pulling back again to
designated defensive areas. J.A.S. Grenville, in _A History of the World
in the Twentieth Century_ (1994), comes to the same conclusion: "It is a
myth that all that was required to humiliate Hitler was a French show of
strength...German troops were to withdraw as far as the Ruhr and there to
stay and fight. But in view of earlier French political and military
decisions it was obvious that the only French counter-moves would be
diplomatic." (p. 224) Hitler knew that France had not marched in March-
April 1935 during the conscription crisis--and the Reich was considerably
stronger eleven months later.
It is far from clear to me that if the French had marched into the
Rhineland, this would have brought down the Hitler government--it might
have had the opposite effect of unifying Germans around him against the
invader (particularly if they saw that Britain and other nations were
critical of the French move). The French, in any event, had unpleasant
memories of their occupations of the Rhineland during the 1920's, and put
their trust in the Maginot Line they were building. BTW, there was one way for
Germany to remilitarize the Rhineland which wouldn't even
have involved the slight risk Hitler actually incurred.
Hitler could simply have proclaimed that the 14,000 Landespolizei in the
Rhineland were hereby incorporated into the Wehrmacht! France was most
unlikely to have intervened to stop a "militarization" that did not
immediately increase by even one the number of armed German forces in the
Rhineland. Yet once the principle of remilitarization was established,
Germany could then gradually add to their number.
I don't know why Hitler didn't choose this low-risk approach to
remilitarization. Probably it was (as suggested by Emmerson) because he
wanted a _dramatic_ proof to the Germans that their "slavery" had ended--
troops marching across the bridges, aircraft over the Cologne Cathedral,
etc.
***
In a later post, I observed:
It is curious that we get so many what-ifs about the Rhineland crisis of
March 1936 and so few about Hitler's introduction of conscription a year
earlier, which was arguably the time France should have moved (even
without British support, if necessary), the Reich obviously being much
weaker militarily than it would be in 1936. Yet even in 1935, there would
be the dilemma that while France was certainly superior militarily to
Germany, it is not clear that a French reoccupation of the Rhineland would
bring down the Hitler regime--it might actually solidify German popular
support of Hitler--and sending French troops all the way to Berlin to
overthrow Hitler, even if it could be done militarily, would be
extraordinarily messy, would involve a lot of French casualties, would
raise the question of just who would succeed Hitler, when could the French
occupying troops ever leave, etc. (And it is doubtful that any French
government could have survived the internal controversies caused by a
bold response to Germany, especially one not supported by the UK: France
was hardly a model of political stability at that time.) Once the military provisions
of the Versailles Treaty had been unilaterally denounced and conscription reinstated,
remilitarization of the Rhineland was just a matter of time.