Electric Review

BOOKS: An estranged entente
Anglo-French Defence Relations Between the Wars, edited by Martin Alexander & William Philpott

Divergent interests
Tomorrow marks the 64th anniversary of Neville Chamberlain’s announcement to the House of Commons of the ‘Polish Guarantee’. This was the commitment that Britain made, dragging France in her wake, that Polish independence would be the basis of war or peace. Importantly, and unlike poor Czechoslovakia, it would be Poland herself — and not the Western powers — who would judge whether or not her independence was being respected. The guarantee was made not to secure Polish independence as an end in itself, but because a few days before Hitler had ripped up the Munich settlement and marched into Prague: demonstrating that the Reich’s ambitions were not merely restricted to German speakers. Thus appeasement ended, and the policy substituted for it was deterrence. The desire was still to avoid war, the means simply had changed. What this achieved for both Poland and France is well known; what it achieved for Britain is more opaque. All the essays in Anglo-French Defence Relations Between the Wars have in common this question: how could the policy have been made to work? Perhaps though the question the history related in this work should suggest is, was the right policy adopted?

Churchill’s history of the war is the mindset we are in essence considering here, and it tells us something unhappy that the second volume of the Second World War is rendered in English as Their Finest Hour but was published in French as, L’heure tragique. The teleological danger for this volume is to presume of the entire inter-war period that what there should have been was an institutionalised Anglo-French defence relationship, all the better either to meet, or better still, pre-empt a foreign policy challenge that was going to arise in the 1930s with the advent of Hitlerism. It cannot be said that every essay avoids falling into this trap, though there is a defence. This is that the lesson of the Great War was just so — that Anglo-French co-operation was the cornerstone of European security, if the order of the continent were to remain liberal and democratic. And so it’s not distorting hindsight that faults historical actors for not preparing for events, but instead a rhetorical continuation of the contemporary arguments made after 1919 for an ongoing Entente. In which case, as these are uniformly excellent contributions, the missing scholarship in this book is any extended examination of the immediate post Great War period.

The undoubted inter-war divergence between France and Britain that sets up the eventual Götterdämmerung of Anglo-French defence relations (why, to be exact, there is a second war) takes place in the very early twenties. Why did the two part company? Did that have to have the consequences it did? Most of the contributors pass quickly over the beginning of their timeframe, taking this parting of the ways as a given. But it wasn’t: it was a consciously, vigorously contested policy choice for both countries. The debates that informed this process cast much light on why France and Britain didn’t cohere the way so many so clearly wish that they might have done. Since they didn’t, and since war is taken to be the consequence, what then were the ways we got to a war that was lost?

In their introductory overview, the book’s editors (Martin Alexander and William Philpott) very effectively chart the systemic failure considered in detail by the subsequent essays — there is not one single unalloyed chronicle of success. Though glancing acknowledgement is made throughout that whatever the shortcomings of the relationship when it mattered, it was deeper and more profound than any that had ever existed between two powers before. Yet things start as they determinedly continue: Britain and France are faulted, over air policy in this instance, for still ‘another narrative of efforts in parallel that never fused into an integrated, unitary air strategy’. This begs the question, from me at any rate, why should there have been one (an ‘integrated, unitary strategy’)? Obviously the response is, because of the threat from Germany — but when should this strategy have been adopted? Before the advent of Nazism, or only after it was in power? And as we can surely see in many of the issues covered, the constant, implicit counterfactual — that Britain and France should have earlier, more explicitly, and aggressively resisted German demands — does not in fact contain within itself its own proof. In other words, even hindsight doesn’t tell us whether, had half these alternate policies been adopted, they would have been any more successful.

Since we’re going to have to dwell on Hitler, it’s useful to remember that his historical egotism is not in truth the be-all and end-all of twentieth century German history. Andrew Webster’s essay on the disarmament process reminds us that well before the Nazis came to power, Germany was already firmly an anti-Settlement power. Hitler’s techniques for overthrowing Versailles were radically different to those of his Weimar predecessors, but his intention in doing so was distinctly within established post-war tradition. As trying to think about a Hiterlite Germany that doesn’t inevitably lead to war is painful work even for the most determined anti-determinist, Italy is more fruitful to think on. But to think on Italy is two very different things, depending on whether you’re trying to think like an inter-war French strategist, or an inter-war British strategist. For the former, Italy meant Germany, and for the latter, she meant Japan.

France had prestige issues at stake vis-à-vis Mussolini’s Italy, the bitter fact being that if she couldn’t even keep up with this third rate power, then she really was sunk. Fascist Italy intermittently obliged, with an increasing tempo in the 1930s — save for when actual fighting might be required from the regime, then there was silence, or frantic pleas for peace — with anti-French provocations. Claims were made to colonies, predominance in the North African littoral, or most ludicrously of all, over the Mediterranean itself. Except that to many, the claim didn’t, on the face of the facts embodied in Italian military hardware, appear to be that outlandish. Whilst there were of course those like Bill Fisher (RN CinC in the mid thirties) who self-confidently believed that Italian military capability was seriously deficient, the dominant, responsible attitude was one of due regard for Italian arms. The solution to the question of Italy was thus rightly seen as being diplomatic. And for much of the inter-war period, the Italy of the Stresa Front was one which served Anglo-French preoccupations. How then was Italy ‘lost’, to borrow the coinage of another debate?

Who was to know
One signal thing to remember, and to distance us from our seemingly certain knowledge now of Italian military incapacity, was that in the end she didn’t fight. Like so much else, proper understanding of the purely paper fact of Italian entry into the war just as France fell is occluded by the fall of France. It was a major goal of Anglo-French diplomacy to detach Italy from her Axis ‘partner’, and at the very least, to simplify their defensive needs by keeping her out of any conflict that erupted with Germany. This, as we forget, is what happened. Its relationship to the intentional policies pursued by Britain and France is as vague as most of the stuff anti-Appeasement historians (let’s name a faction while we’re at it) cloak in the mantle of destiny when they consider the origins of the war, but it’s one chalked up for the good guys that never quite gets the attention it quite deserves.

As a practical issue, French interest in Italy was keenest in her desire to prevent any interruption of the supply of colonial troops from Africa to the Western front-to-be. Hence Italy-as-Germany for Paris. That Italy was really Japan as far as British defence planners were concerned is self-evident. Contrary to the David Day school of history that whines of metropolitan abandonment of Australia, the (British) chiefs of staff [COS] were so determined to meet any Japanese threat to the Far Eastern and Pacific empire that they drove London’s determination to appease Italy, not because she mattered, but because she mattered so little. The COS were determined that the Foreign Office diplomatically arrange matters, so that dispositions in the Mediterranean would reflect their desire that it should be the empire’s ‘least pressing military obligation’. Which brings us to the fundamental tension as between Paris and London’s strategic outlook: despite her enormous empire, France, having no choice, saw herself primarily as being a European power; Britain, believing, for most of the inter-war period, herself to have that choice, did not. Empire came first. An outlook greatly added to by the fact that Britain had dominions and France did not.

For Britain, with her global responsibilities and challenges, the key issues were, French security, because that was held to be the bedrock of the UK’s security, and the threat otherwise to the empire. Such threats as there were, came chiefly from a distracted and weakened Soviet Union, and Japan. Chamberlain, recognising French weakness, pursued with characteristic determination, appeasement of Germany in order to solve the first problem; he allowed his government to plan, if not at all well, for the second matter because of his equally characteristic astringency about the likelihood of American resistance to Japanese militarism. Italy entered this calculation in as much as she straddled the means by which Britain had to divert her over-stretched naval resources to deal with these problems.

Modern opponents of the appeasement of Italy essentially contend that, she should have been knocked down (because she could have been) over, say, Abyssinia, because that would have detached an Axis opponent from the armed coalition imminently to be ranged against Britain and France. But as we have borne in mind, she didn’t end up a serious fighting threat to the Anglo-French until France fell. How then should we see the benefit of starting a war with her, that could have dragged in Germany, and wasn’t anyway liable to involve France (who foot-dragged on this still more determinedly than Britain did on any fantastic prospect of pre-emptive action against Germany)? Recent historiography likes to suggest that Mao ‘lost China’; in the case of Italy, there’s a plausible argument to be made that no one lost her. A question whole huge books still need to be written on is, why didn’t we far more vigorously appease Japan? That, however, is a fight for another day.

Away from Berlin
Possibly the single most insightful chapter is Talbot Imlay’s on ‘the Making of the Anglo-French Alliance’, which considers the concrete military and diplomatic nexus that finally did emerge in late 1938 and early 1939. His thumped-home aim is to take on all those reams of explanation for the origins of the war that place all centrality on the London-Berlin relationship, and relegate Paris to tame followership. It’s lost on us now just how important it was that this relationship blossomed into something so substantial, and how much of a change that was from what had prevailed between the two for the previous two decades. (It’s also, if we were foolish and anachronistic enough to stray into another historiographical debate, surely one in the eye for those who posit a firm, overt Anglo-French alliance as a means by which the First World War would have been avoided? After all, making things explicit didn’t deter Germany in 1939, so why should they have in 1914? We will, though, as the age has it, not go there).

Imlay argues that France had determined upon confrontation with Germany (i.e. had concluded that appeasement had run out of steam as a plausible policy) before Britain, but that this shift was unknown among British decision makers. The point is therefore to be made that, one way or the other, Britain, rather than leading France towards resistance, ending up adopting a policy France had already decided on for them both. As with all these debates, we can each find our demi-ideal protagonists. In late 1938 (and with French governments, these things always need specifying), Foreign Minister Georges Bonnet argued, in the wake of Prague and the dissolution of the Munich settlement, for French retreat from her remaining Eastern European commitments. He saw that they had become liabilities, and certainly beyond the France that he acutely knew he was governing. His words to a journalist in 1938 are every bit as perceptive as any vatic Churchillian offering, but so seldom cited that it does the heart good to see them here:

Let’s not have any more heroics. We are not capable of them . . . It is all very well to proclaim yourself the policemen of Europe, but for this you need more than cap guns, straw handcuffs and paper Prisons . . . France can no longer permit itself a blood bath such as that of 1914. Our demographic strength declines every year. Finally, the Popular Front placed the country in such a state that it would be wise for France to allow itself a period of convalescence. Any imprudence could be fatal.

Who’s to argue with that for realism?

This was the period — after Prague but before the Polish guarantee — when classical appeasement (of Germany) was dead, but when receuillement [withdrawal] was a viable option. The tragedy, as Imlay demonstrates, was that the Bonnet tendency within the French government was defeated, and that France in turn dragged Britain towards a confrontation with Germany, and all on the supremely inconvenient grounds of Poland. Inside French decision-making circles, the idea of pursuing a Western (European) and Imperial focus was opposed by many because of fears of what an Eastern Europe engorged Germany would amount to. This is especially plausible when one bears in mind the high place economic blockade played in Anglo-French visions of any victory that would be won in the course of a three or so year war against Germany.

If you want your ‘origin of the war’ narrative, this truly is it. Inside the French political class, and showing the interlinked nature of all things, the high political resistance to ‘retreat’ was a product largely of a desire not to be seen to retreat in front of the Italians. With any comprehensive scheme of diplomatic retrenchment thus fatally undermined, all receuillement was vitiated — it being an all-or-nothing undertaking. France, on the basis of her post-war experience of Britain to date believed that such military help as she was set to get from Britain would be negligible; yet at the same time she believed that Britain would be obliged by her own interests to intervene on behalf of France should war come. Just as France rightly doubted the practical worth of British aid, so Britain rightly doubted the internal health of the French state, and, in Chamberlain’s more wildly assertive moments, did indeed feel that she knew what was in France’s best interests rather better than did the cavalcade of French governments. Which of them was wrong in what they thought of the other?

To get the succour she craved, the French, with the connivance of the British military, affected to believe in grosser French weakness than they actually did. This had the consequence of obliging Britain to offer her buoying support. Without this tempted support, France would not have had the confidence to put up a diplomatic fight against Germany in Eastern Europe. And that’s how we ended up with a war we couldn’t win.

Everyone was right
Since ‘Western Europe’ was a key strategic issue for Britain, and given that France couldn’t provide unilaterally for her own security (and was thus dependent upon her ally), yet the means to defend this Anglo-French position were so slender in the face of German revanche, is not the retrospective case for Inskipian limited liability unanswerable?

Trying to place ourselves in the mental landscape inhabited by senior British and French politicians on the eve of war reveals the following Germany: an economy that is in great difficulty (so gradualist economic warfare becomes ever more appealing as a war-fighting tactic); and, a country whose national morale is plummeting. In as much as we can ever usefully apprehend things like ‘national morale’, there seems little doubt in most accounts of Germany in 1939 that a terrible fear of war existed. The easy triumphs had been wonderful, and genuinely popular, and as had Chamberlain and his peace-making. The prospect, however, of great power war brought out the same despair amongst the German people as it did in all other European states. How little that ultimately mattered brings us back to what governments did as the most important area of investigation.

That it is what governments did do, and not what they didn’t, which ought to make up historical writing is apparent even in the theme of these essays: the presumptive defence relationship between Britain and France. Simply put: the defence relationship between Britain and France was perfection made flesh on earth compared to that between the supposed steel-hearted fascists of the Axis. Their military successes owed nothing to a functioning defence relationship (there wasn’t one) and its partial absence as between Britain and France for most of the twenties and thirties, shouldn’t distract us too much.

The story of the war (we can all sing our own songs as to how we got there) was the fall of France. That was The Thing That Shouldn’t Have Happened. Dim, unconscious appreciation that it might well happen was the fear that explains much of the decisions taken by British and French statesmen between the wars. If you want to have a dog in this fight, you’ve got two choices, anti-appeasement, and appeasement. Loudly will the anti-appeasers tell you that the lesson they’ve learnt from the fact that there was a second war is, it could have been prevented by doing any one of a thousand things. Oh so quietly the appeasers will whisper to you from their intellectual and political graves, we were there, we saw what could be done, and we would have, were it feasible. The choice is between realism and wish-fulfilment. It’s between — poor, slandered Neville — right and wrong: between the practical desire to see right being done, versus the notion that the intensity of the desire is the true demonstration of moral worth. And in the final reckoning, it is the choice between good luck and bad luck. Britain’s luck was in, and for four hellish years, France’s luck was out. Had France been denied the deluding comfort of a defence relationship with Britain, the odds are that she would not have favoured war with Germany over Poland. And after avoiding that unhappiness, well who’s to say what would have happened?

PG Coates seeks tenure anywhere in Wales, even Lampeter.

Anglo-French Defence Relations Between the Wars, edited by Martin S. Alexander & William J. Philpott, [Palgrave, pp. 231, £45.00]

Peter Greene Coates, March 30, 2003 03:10 PM