Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

by Ian Kershaw

  Only a brief time afterwards, Hitler dispatched his adjutants to find a field headquarters in East Prussia.107 On 5 December he told Brauchitsch and Halder to prepare the army for an attack on Russia at the end of the coming May.108 Three days later he heard that renewed attempts to win over Spain had failed. Franco had decided categorically to keep Spain out of the war. Hitler promptly called off preparations to take Gibraltar ‘since the political conditions are no longer available’.109 The operation was abandoned on 9 January, even if Hitler dreamed for some while longer of its possible resurrection.110 Long before this, the eastward direction of German strategy had been fixed with Hitler’s formal directive on 18 December for ‘Operation Barbarossa’, with the expressed aim, even before the war against Britain was won, ‘to crush Soviet Russia in a rapid campaign’.111 The decision reached in principle on 31 July was now enshrined in a military directive. There would be no turning back. The possibility of an alternative strategy which had briefly presented itself in the late summer and autumn could now definitively be ruled out.112

  V

  Did Hitler, in making his fateful choice in 1940, miss the opportunity of following an alternative course of action which could have led to victory or, at the very least, avoided the calamitous path to defeat that was to follow?

  In the light of what we have seen, the question has perhaps to be approached in different ways. The first and most important consideration relates to Hitler’s own thinking. He, after all, determined policy. Others might seek to influence him. But, ultimately, he decided. Hitler certainly did not think he had missed a chance. In his eyes, despite testing a number of possibilities in the late summer and autumn of 1940, none proved a practicable alternative to the course which he had already regarded by July as the most promising strategy–an attack on the Soviet Union to attain rapid victory before the winter, laying the ground for the wider struggle against Britain and America. This of course fitted his long-established and unchanging ideological convictions. But strategic considerations were paramount in determining the timing.

  The United States, he thought, would be ready to enter the war on Britain’s side by 1942.113 He was convinced, therefore, that time was not on Germany’s side. Continental dominance, the end of the European war and the impregnability that this would bring had to be attained during 1941 before any conflict with the United States ensued. There is no indication that he considered postponing, let alone cancelling, the invasion of Russia that he had envisaged for spring 1941. The preparations set in train at the end of July 1940 were never halted. By containing Great Britain and deterring the United States, the ‘peripheral strategy’ offered for him a device for paving the way for the attack on the Soviet Union, not a replacement for it. There is little doubt that he was serious in his support for both the military and diplomatic moves centring on the Mediterranean and the Iberian peninsula. But from his perspective there was nothing to be done during the war to reconcile or overcome the serious differences of interest which separated the main powers in the region, Italy, France and Spain. And since the necessary political framework could not be established, a military strategy for the Mediterranean was unlikely to pay a high dividend.

  Without Spain’s entry into the war, an assault on Gibraltar, the key to the western Mediterranean, became a different proposition. It could be achieved.114 But the cost, militarily and politically, would be high. It was no wonder, therefore, that it was called off, once Franco made it clear that Spain would remain neutral. The other main prong of the Mediterranean military strategy, the push to Suez, depended upon the Italians, who soon proved themselves to be the weakest link in the military chain. Once Mussolini had invaded Greece–immediately and unsurprisingly branded by Hitler as an act of stupidity115–the prospects of Italian success in north Africa vanished. But with the weakened and stretched Italians up against it in Libya, the push for Suez obviously could not take place. Finally, there was little to be done with France. Until the end of 1940, when Italy’s Greek venture had created such difficulties that Mussolini would have welcomed a German-French agreement, the Italians had been reluctant to see any rebuilding of French strength in the Mediterranean and north Africa.116

  For Hitler, therefore, an alternative to his chosen strategy never posed itself. And what he was aiming for–a prop for his chosen strategy–could not be accomplished. From his point of view, there was, therefore, no chance that was missed.117

  Did others, close to the heart of strategic planning, think a chance had been missed? The clearest alternative, as we have seen, was thought out by the navy, and it was put before Hitler by Grand Admiral Raeder on more than one occasion. We noted that Raeder did attempt, if not forcefully, to dissuade Hitler from pressing ahead with the attack on Russia. Hitler even agreed with Raeder’s proposals for a Mediterranean strategy (though not in place of an eastern campaign). But he changed his tune again, and definitively, in the autumn, particularly following Molotov’s visit. There was no question in his eyes about the threat to Germany posed by the Soviet Union. So Raeder, for the reasons already adduced, had no serious prospect of persuading Hitler to change his plans. Hitler never deviated from his conviction that destruction of the Soviet Union in a lightning campaign was the only route to overall victory. Moreover, Raeder, though he favoured another route, did not actually oppose the invasion of Russia, even if he was lukewarm about it. And by the time the navy’s preferred Mediterranean strategy had taken shape–leaving aside the grandiose utopian dreams of a vast colonial empire that had temporarily seemed so attractive in the wake of the defeat of France–both the political and military framework for its accomplishment were crumbling, leaving the force of Hitler’s argument for the Russian option difficult to counter.

  In the High Command of the Wehrmacht, the most outspoken advocate of a Mediterranean strategy was Jodl’s deputy in the Wehrmacht Operations Staff, and head of its strategic planning section, General Warlimont. But his advancement of proposals to focus Germany’s military effort on the drive through north Africa became increasingly futile as the autumn progressed. Warlimont had little support from Jodl, his immediate superior and Hitler’s closest adviser on strategic matters. Despite the fact that he himself had put forward the ‘peripheral strategy’ at the end of June, Jodl, as we have noted, viewed this as the basis for facilitating the strategic goal which Hitler had established: the attack on Russia.118 Though Jodl was little involved before December 1940 in the detailed preparations for the war in the east, which were the province of the army’s High Command, not the Wehrmacht Operations Staff, he did not question Hitler’s fundamental decision to attack the Soviet Union. Uncritical belief in Hitler as a military genius, greatly magnified since the triumph over France, ruled out any conceivable opposition from this quarter,119 and even more so if anything from the toadying Keitel. Whatever the initial doubts of Brauchitsch and Halder, the leaders of the army (which was evidently the key branch of the Wehrmacht in the forthcoming assault on Russia), they were quickly quelled. Both rapidly saw preparation for the war in the east as the outright priority. As Halder had noted on 13 July, they, like Hitler, saw Britain’s hopes of Russia as the key to her refusal to come to terms.120 No serious consideration was given to any alternative, and certainly no alternative strategy could be expected from a Luftwaffe whose leadership was more pro-Nazi than that of the army, and whose Commander-in-Chief was Göring, fearful of losing favour with Hitler and not least for that reason committed to support for an eastern campaign.121

  The divided organizational structure of the German armed forces in itself hindered the promotion of any serious alternative to Hitler’s own plans. As we have already noted, the chiefs of staff of the army, navy and air force, and the chief of the Operations Staff of the Wehrmacht High Command (responsible for overall strategic planning) did not meet in a body to devise strategy. Nor did the commanders-in-chief come together, except in Hitler’s domineering presence when genuine discussion was as good as impossible.122 So the axis of co
mmon interest briefly forged between Warlimont’s office and naval command both lacked support elsewhere within the armed forces and had no outlet to argue the case for an alternative which could have been put as a reasoned strategy in opposition to Hitler’s. Structurally, therefore, it was impossible to construct a coherent alternative strategy. None was ever available to be put forward for consideration. But without that coherent alternative, it is difficult to argue that a chance was missed.123

  But even if Hitler did not see any other chance, and the armed forces were not capable of presenting a compelling alternative, is it possible, finally, to posit a theoretical chance, an option which could have won Germany the war, or at least have prevented such a disastrous outcome, if only the leadership had not been blind to it? Here, of course, we leave historical terrain–that which happened and the actual strategic considerations at the time–and move to the realm of counter-factual speculation. Given the number of possible variables to take into consideration, this rapidly degenerates into little more than an academic guessing game. But, staying with the thought-experiment for a moment, it is possible to imagine that a full German commitment to war in the Mediterranean and north Africa–demanding also a tougher policy towards the Italians, as well as the Spaniards, and full acceptance of the French as fighting allies–at the expense of preparation for a war in the east could have paid dividends in at least the short to medium term, would have given the overall war a different complexion and another possible outcome, and might have avoided the total calamity that came to befall Germany.

  The Mediterranean was, it must be admitted, not as vital to Britain’s global Empire as Raeder had claimed. Nevertheless, loss of control of the Mediterranean, followed by deprivation of possessions and oil in the Middle East, would unquestionably have been a grave blow. Britain and her Empire would certainly have been seriously weakened, especially if national independence movements in the Middle East and India had, as most probably would have been the case, gained in strength and confidence as a result of British military setbacks. And it is far from certain that the United States, where even as it was Roosevelt had to struggle for months against strong isolationist tendencies, would have rushed to support a weakened Britain. The Japanese would doubtless have shown little hesitation in exploiting British discomfiture in the Far East, so that the Americans, instead of seeing the Atlantic as the main concern, might have found their attention diverted towards the Pacific at an earlier stage than was historically the case.

  Whether, given such a bleak scenario, Britain would have continued to hold out, or would have discarded the Churchill government and looked for peace terms with Germany is a moot point. With Britain subordinated, the European continent and north Africa under German control and the Americans preoccupied with Japan, the ‘Russian question’ would have been seen in a different light. There would have been less urgency, less immediate strategic necessity, to crush the Soviet Union in 1941. The detestation of Bolshevism would have remained. But Stalin’s regime would have appeared less of a threat, more capable of containment, and, therefore, perhaps not worth a dangerous military gamble in a lightning war of aggression, thus weakening Hitler’s own case for the eastern war in the eyes of his military leaders.

  But a Mediterranean strategy, even if followed through, would probably still have led at some point to the war of the continents which Hitler envisaged. Most likely this would have come sooner rather than later, with Germany, holding down massive imperial conquests by little more than brute force and tyranny, still unable to contend in the long run with the immensity of American resources. Conceivably, if circumstances had become favourable, the Soviet Union would have taken the opportunity to join in on the Allied side. Germany would have then faced the feared war on two fronts after all. A race to build nuclear weapons would have taken place and, as indeed happened, would most probably have been won by American scientists (some of German descent). An imaginable outcome of such a contest would have been the dropping of American atom bombs on Berlin and Munich, rather than Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  In the real world of Hitler, rather than the counter-factual world of fantasy and imagination, it seems clear that no chance was missed in 1940. Given the leadership which Germany had, and the very reason she was facing a strategic dilemma in the summer and autumn of 1940 in the first place, the attack on the Soviet Union was indeed the only practicable way open. It was Hitler’s decision, though the blame for it does not stop at his door, as some postwar apologetics would have had it. It goes beyond him and ranges widely. The regime’s military elite, though with extensive backing both among other power-groupings and within the German population, had supported the policies of a leader who had taken Germany into a gamble for world power with the odds in the long run stacked heavily against her and without a ‘get-out clause’. By 1940, unable to end the war, the only option for Hitler, and for the regime which had helped to put him in that position, was to gamble further, to take, as always, the bold, forward move, one that would sweep over the Russians ‘like a hailstorm’ and make the world ‘hold its breath’.124 It was madness, but there was method in it.

  3

  Tokyo, Summer and Autumn 1940

  Japan Decides to Seize the ‘Golden Opportunity’

  Seize this golden opportunity! Don’t let anything stand in the way!

  Hata Shunroku, Army Minister, 25 June 1940

  Never in our history has there been a time like the present, when it is so urgent to plan for the development of our national power…We should grasp the favourable opportunity that now presents itself.

  Statement of the army’s position, 4 July 1940

  In the Far East another war altogether was raging. It had started in July 1937, more than two years before the European war, and had seen barbarities inflicted by Japanese troops on the Chinese civilian population that matched in their appalling inhumanity those suffered by Poles at the hands of the conquering Germans from autumn 1939. ‘The China Incident’, as the Japanese invariably called the war with China, was completely separate from the European war that began with the German invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939. However, the interests of the European ‘great powers’ and the United States in China inevitably meant that the bitter conflict had grave international implications from the outset. No end to this war was in sight by spring 1940, when the German western offensive overran the Low Countries and France and brought Great Britain almost to her knees. It was in the wake of Hitler’s astonishing military triumphs in western Europe that Japan, seeking to exploit the weakness of those countries, took the fateful decisions to expand into south-eastern Asia (where Britain, France and the Netherlands held significant colonial possessions) and to forge a pact with the Axis powers, Germany and Italy. In so doing, over these crucial months Japan made choices which greatly increased the risk of her involvement in armed conflict not only with the European powers, but also with the United States. The road to Pearl Harbor was as yet far from being a one-way street. But summer 1940 was the time when the Japanese leadership took vital steps that would lead eventually to blending the two separate wars in Europe and in China into one huge global conflagration.

  I

  The war with China, which embroiled Japan ever more from 1937 onwards, lay at the heart of the course of action that would culminate in her willingness to risk all by attacking the United States of America. The immediate prehistory of this war went back six years, to the Japanese attack on Chinese troops in Manchuria in September 1931–the ‘Mukden Incident’, in Japanese parlance–which not only marked a turning point in international relations in the Far East, but also signalled the changing basis of power within Japan.

  There was, however, a longer prehistory. This was rooted in Japan’s ambitions to become a great power in the Far East, with the trappings of a colonial empire and enhanced international status. Such ambitions dated back to the late nineteenth century, as Japan, under Emperor Meiji, was undergoing rapid modernization, accommodating western met
hods to Japanese culture. Wars, in each case started by Japanese aggression, against China in 1894–5 and Russia in 1904–5, had established Japan’s position as the dominant power in east Asia. Within Asia, Japan’s successes were frequently interpreted as blows against western domination of the region. In reality, Japan was laying the foundations for her own imperialist quest for mastery. Japan had gained possession of Korea, Taiwan, the southern part of the island of Sakhalin, and important leasehold rights together with control of a 700-mile stretch of railway in southern Manchuria. Japan had also, in 1901, been granted the right to keep troops in Peking and a number of other cities in China, ostensibly to protect diplomats and the Japanese minority population in such areas. China, its centralized government in an advanced state of disintegration, later extended the concessions to Japan in southern Manchuria. During the First World War, which she had entered on the Allied side with an eye to gaining German possessions in the Far East, Japan exploited China’s weakness and political disorder to gain recognition of her position in southern Manchuria and the adjacent region of eastern Inner Mongolia, and to extend her leasehold and railway rights. Japan even went so far as to demand, in 1915, the establishment of joint Chinese-Japanese police forces in China and the acceptance of Japanese advisers in political, economic and military affairs. China would as a consequence have been effectively reduced to the status of a Japanese colony. Through allied support for China, it was fended off on this occasion. But it left smouldering resentment and animosity among the Chinese population, and it foreshadowed Japan’s attempt to dominate China some twenty years later.