WI Britain and France gave Germany a war ultimatum when it occupied Bohemia?

Edited based on the initial feedback:

Appeasement was fully discredited after Hitler's occupation of Prague. What if, instead of taking the approach of drawing lines by guaranteeing the next prospective victims, Britain and France basically went onto a war footing in the weeks after the occupation of Prague, mobilizing, speeding up rearmament, economically embargoing and blockading Germany and preclusively buying up supplies. The British and French issue the Germans a "slow ultimatum" since the occupation of Bohemia is already a fait accompli, and the initial stages of the war from the Allied side will be "phony" as the OTL war of 1939. So on March 31, Britain and France demand Germany evacuate rump Bohemia in 60 days, and allow in League of Nations monitors, or Britain and and France will be in a state of war with Germany. [the 60 days timeframe is comparable to the amount of time Saddam Hussein was given to withdraw from Kuwait in 1990-1991]

What happens from April 1939 onwards under these circumstances?

Were there any UK and/or French land forces that can be deployed against Germany after the 60 days? If not, then such ultimate is just a mere bluff.
 
Were there any UK and/or French land forces that can be deployed against Germany after the 60 days? If not, then such ultimate is just a mere bluff.

Of course yes. In 60 days the French can mobilize their whole army. The British army won't be very sizable, but a couple of corps could be fielded.
 
Of course yes. In 60 days the French can mobilize their whole army. The British army won't be very sizable, but a couple of corps could be fielded.
As far as I know this would pretty much be OTL forces minus six months of equipment and training. Bearing in mind what the BEF looked like in Sep 39 that’s a bit worrying, I’m not sure how it would impact the French army.
 
As far as I know this would pretty much be OTL forces minus six months of equipment and training. Bearing in mind what the BEF looked like in Sep 39 that’s a bit worrying, I’m not sure how it would impact the French army.

Not exactly. Yes, there would be those six months less of equipping and training, but there would be a month and half more of determined preparation for war (given by the 60-day ultimatum). That's different from late August 1939 only.

That said, my point was answering to the question of whether there would be forces; yes, there would be.
 
Has anyone here read Finkel and Leibowitz's The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion where the argument is that Chamberlain had in fact given Hitler a free hand in eastern Europe at Munich, and had anticipated Hitler's occupation of Prague and indeed at first regarded it with some equanimity on March 15, and only changed to an anti-Hitler position on March 17 because he learned that Hitler had allowed Hungary to occupy Ruthenia--which convinced Chamberlain that Hitler's real target was not in the East (an invasion of Soviet Ukraine, now apparently ruled out) but in the West? See https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=2343 for a skeptical review and https://www.h-france.net/reviews/pre2001reviews/finkel2.html for Finkel's reply.
 

raharris1973

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Has anyone here read Finkel and Leibowitz's The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion where the argument is that Chamberlain had in fact given Hitler a free hand in eastern Europe at Munich, and had anticipated Hitler's occupation of Prague and indeed at first regarded it with some equanimity on March 15, and only changed to an anti-Hitler position on March 17 because he learned that Hitler had allowed Hungary to occupy Ruthenia--which convinced Chamberlain that Hitler's real target was not in the East (an invasion of Soviet Ukraine, now apparently ruled out) but in the West? See https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=2343 for a skeptical review and https://www.h-france.net/reviews/pre2001reviews/finkel2.html for Finkel's reply.

No I did not, but seeing as it was from the late 1990s, I wonder if this book or at least its underlying thesis was foundational to Stuart Wilkes' view on WWII, appeasement and the perfidy of the west whenever there was a discussion touching on this on SHWI in the early 2000s.

Personally, what inspired me to do this thread and encouraged me to not dismiss the prospect of Allied moves even before the invasion of Poland was reading this book,

Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second World War, which characterizes Chamberlain as being increasingly out of step with the center of British opinion after Godesburg or Munich.


 

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I was not trying to yell, I just copied it off amazon, and wasn't able to paste right click to have it match the local font like I would have expected.
 
I haven’t read the book but what’s the relevance of public opinion in this case? The British public don’t even get to directly choose their prime minister, never mind whether or when their country goes to war. Chamberlain rearmed the country as fast as the experts told him was possible and even then declared war before the process was complete, I can’t see any scenario where riots in the streets force him to declare war six months earlier.
 
Has anyone here read Finkel and Leibowitz's The Chamberlain-Hitler Collusion

I read parts of it and other material by these (or by Finkel only, maybe). The problem is that Chamberlain is a devil and Stalin a saint, in that story.
 

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I haven’t read the book but what’s the relevance of public opinion in this case? The British public don’t even get to directly choose their prime minister, never mind whether or when their country goes to war. Chamberlain rearmed the country as fast as the experts told him was possible and even then declared war before the process was complete, I can’t see any scenario where riots in the streets force him to declare war six months earlier.

It also gets into party membership opinion, and more importantly, cabinet member opinion, in which Chamberlain was getting increasingly isolated. Cabinet opinion was at least "semi-expert". "Experts" were not all one unified bloc.
 

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I think the British have to give what remains of Czechoslovakia a Polish-like guarantee in say December 1938, after a few by-elections have all gone to the Labour or Liberals, with the Conservative candidates being branded as "friends of Hitler". The Chamberlain government remains in the saddle, but decides a very clear warning has to be given to Hitler.

Naturally, Hitler still needs the Czech factories and the gold stored in the central bank. So he goes ahead.

See post #25. In order to create a basis for war over Bohemia in May 1939, the PoD has to be in say December 1938, with the British signing a guarantee, and then probably a full alliance, with Czechoslovakia, and an involvement of the Czechs in the planning. Hopefully the Soviets get recruited too. The bottom line is that the Czech government turns down Hitler's meeting invitaiton (ultimatum would be the better word). No agreement. Germany has to declare war or invade in the face of live-fire opposition.

I see your concept, stated twice above, that a precondition of the west declaring war over the occupation of Bohemia in spring 1939 is the British govt drawing a line in Dec 1938 after Munich, motivated by domestic political pressure (You remarked on losing some by=elections to Labor at that time. I don't know if there were any OTL, or who won them)

I think your concept is the most natural one in terms of setting up the international diplomatic pretext for a casus belli/DoW.

Declaring war in March after warning Germany that moving another inch means war the previous December makes more apparent diplomatic sense than declaring war or issuing an ultimatum out of the blue right after the occupation of Bohemia without any prior warning save the nominal guarantee of rump Czechoslovakia at the time of Munich.

....on the other hand...

...I would argue that avoiding explicit threats in fall 1938 but then suddenly demanding German retreat on pain of war in spring 1939 actually makes *more* sense from a British *domestic politics* point of view.

I base this on analysis of British opinion, and British cabinet discussions, described in RAC Parker's "Chamberlain and Appeasement".

In the immediate sense of relief from impending doom after Munich, it would be nigh impossible to shake Chamberlain from his confidence that the appeasement tactics worked and threats would be counterproductives.

It would have seemed too pessimistic right after Munich to threaten Germany about further expansion and do staff stalks to render guarantees effective immediately after Chamberlain's homecoming.

However, the sense of anger and betrayal became overwhelming after the occupation of Prague and many conservatives and most MPs thought Chamberlain's reaction was far too weak.

*This* is the time when more Cabinet or conservative party members were advising war or threatening to resign or break with Chamberlain.

Chamberlain could have been very vulnerable to a complete loss of faith in his own previous policy, or an intra-conservative coup, or a fatal or incapacitating heart attack or stroke in the immediate aftermath of the occupation of Bohemia, and any of these events would have opened the door to the British cabinet deciding to issue an ultimatum for the Germans to evacuate Bohemia, or else war.

I don't have any descriptions of the Soviet/Allied negotiations in front of me. A close look at what the Soviet representatives proposed would be a indication. I have some vague memories of inquiries; about loans, Britains banks had capital to lend & Germany had none; removal of obstacles to services of industry, probably petroleum; removal of obstacles for Soviet exports; easier purchase of industrial items from Britain and France. I suspect expanding capitol investment via loans and export/import sales looked more flexible, efficient, and attractive than the barter system with Germany. Most descriptions have vague remarks about the military side of the discussions, & nothing about the other aspects.

These all seem pretty harmless from an Anglo-French point of view.

And then Hitler would've waved the April 14th accord, signed by Czech president Emil Hácha, in which the latter had laid the fate of the Czech people into the hands of the Führer of the Greater German Empire, in front of everyone's nose. That said signiture had only been affixed by the very outspoken threat that, shouldn't it be, the Luftwaffe would start bombing Prague to the ground at 04:00 hours next day and after Hitler's quack had sufficiently resuscitated the poor old man after his circulatory collapse upon hearing this and reportedly being chased by Göring around a billiard table, to do so, would have of course remained unmentioned.

Well if they occupy it already, it makes no sense to bomb it.
 

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And then Hitler would've waved the April 14th accord, signed by Czech president Emil Hácha, in which the latter had laid the fate of the Czech people into the hands of the Führer of the Greater German Empire, in front of everyone's nose. That said signiture had only been affixed by the very outspoken threat that, shouldn't it be, the Luftwaffe would start bombing Prague to the ground at 04:00 hours next day and after Hitler's quack had sufficiently resuscitated the poor old man after his circulatory collapse upon hearing this and reportedly being chased by Göring around a billiard table, to do so, would have of course remained unmentioned.

Well, this is bringing up the good point that anything other than a peaceful surrender of Czechoslovakia is going to cause additional humanitarian costs of the Czechs on top of OTL's. And indeed, Hitler threatened to bomb Prague to the ground. Perhaps he could do so, without destroying crucial labor or manufacturing or housing resources he desired for his own purposes, since the main Skoda campus was in Pilsen, and I assume he would not bomb that to the ground.

If Hitler has occupied Bohemia though, and it is without fighting, but his occupation causes a western declaration of war (after an ultimatum of some kind), then the territory is occupied and it doesn't make sense to bomb any of the occupied productive assets he can use. At the same time, he will be enraged at allied political interference and may seek to demonstrate their folly and vent his rage by abusing the Czechs. I imagine he would do that by choosing to variously arrest, dispossess, enslave or execute various groups of people in the Czech lands already considered "undesirable", including Jews, Gypsies, politicians, Czech language cultural institutions, the handicapped or elderly. He could also demolish, on the ground any Czech national/cultural treasures that had no symbolic value for German Bohemians and which could not be converted into liquid wealth.
 
Some questions: Where were built most of german tanks?
How would fare Germany without all those Skoda made Panzer tanks?
 

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Some questions: Where were built most of german tanks?
How would fare Germany without all those Skoda made Panzer tanks?

Well the way I wrote it up in the OP, and the way I restated it in post #51, the Germans still occupy Skoda with the rest of Bohemia bloodlessly, so they get all that.

With the variations Michele introduces, the Czechs and perhaps Soviet air force are trying to resist in Bohemia, it is not a bloodless occupation, so some tanks will be destroyed in fighting and there will be some destruction of physical plant. However, Germany is well positioned to envelope Bohemia and defeat resistance there before too long, so captures of both tanks and physical plant that could be usable, or usable with repairs, should occur. After all, France fought back, but the Germans still captured alot of tanks and trucks from France.
 
Well the way I wrote it up in the OP, and the way I restated it in post #51, the Germans still occupy Skoda with the rest of Bohemia bloodlessly, so they get all that.

With the variations Michele introduces, the Czechs and perhaps Soviet air force are trying to resist in Bohemia, it is not a bloodless occupation, so some tanks will be destroyed in fighting and there will be some destruction of physical plant. However, Germany is well positioned to envelope Bohemia and defeat resistance there before too long, so captures of both tanks and physical plant that could be usable, or usable with repairs, should occur. After all, France fought back, but the Germans still captured alot of tanks and trucks from France.

But would they have time to produce tanks if at war with France and Britain?
 

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But would they have time to produce tanks if at war with France and Britain?

If they wait until May 1940 to actually attack the west they should have time to produce the amount of tanks they had in OTL May 1940. If they wait to attack the west until September 1939 they should have as many tanks as they had against Poland. If they begin a march west ASAP after the British and French DoW or ultimatum runs out, they would have less than in any of their OTL campaigns.
 
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