Despite 420,000 workers being on strike in September 1934, halfway through Roosevelt’s term of office, by 1936 his measures were beginning to have an effect. For all the strikes nationwide and black riots in Harlem in 1935, unemployment was halved and industrial production had increased by 20 per cent, company profits were up by 50 per cent and the Dow Jones had risen by 80 per cent. Hindsight says that Roosevelt was a shoo-in for a second term, but all the polls and most of the press said otherwise. For the 1936 presidential election, the smart money was on Roosevelt losing by a landslide, hated as he was by right-wingers, the rich and big business, but also by the extreme left, which reminded anyone who would listen that he had vetoed the spring 1936 passing of an Act to pay the erstwhile marchers their bonus – a veto which was duly overturned by a two-thirds vote of each house. In the event, he won by the largest majority achieved up to that time, carrying every state except Maine and Vermont and gaining 523 Electoral College votes to the Republican Landon’s eight. As the Democrats also now controlled 75 per cent of both houses of Congress, Roosevelt could do pretty much as he liked.
The New Deal passed the Minimum Wages Act, which also stipulated a forty-hour week. It was thrown out by the Supreme Court but the Social Security Act, which introduced pensions and unemployment insurance, survived, probably because it specifically did not apply to the bottom of the social scale: migrant and domestic workers and agricultural labourers. All this demanded a huge injection of public funds, and something had to go. As usual in democracies, it was defence that took much of the hit, and, apart from some increases in the naval estimates, the military establishment, already tiny, shrank and then shrank again. Much was made in the press of a forty-two-year-old lieutenant and a sixty-year-old sergeant being on the army’s active list, with the average age of captains being forty-three.* Half a million undergraduates had signed a petition saying that, if Congress declared war, they would refuse to serve. Douglas MacArthur was sent off to the Philippines in 1936 to get him out of the way – probably rightly, Roosevelt regarded him as one of the two most dangerous men in America* – and with him went his staff officer, Major Dwight D. Eisenhower. Pacifism and isolationism were in the air and as ever there were no votes in defence.
Roosevelt’s enemies said he had no foreign policy. This was not entirely fair. The president did have views on foreign affairs but he kept them to himself at a time when his, and the nation’s, priorities were domestic. Americans took a passing interest in Edward VIII’s affair with Mrs Simpson and his subsequent abdication, and they knew Winston Churchill as a writer of anti-communist tracts, but otherwise they had little knowledge of what went on abroad. The United States recognized the USSR in November 1933 but was certainly not interested in foreign entanglements. The Neutrality Acts, passed by Congress in 1935 and reluctantly approved by Roosevelt, were a sop to those in America who insisted that she had achieved none of her goals in the first war, and had merely acted as a provider of loans that were not being repaid. These were the same people who regarded the League of Nations (of which the United States was not a member) as an imperialist plot to lure America into foreign wars that were none of her business, and, while they probably did not represent majority opinion, which was broadly uninterested, they were a vocal and influential lobby.† The Acts banned the export or sale of arms and the granting of loans to any belligerent in a war in which the US was not herself engaged. The Democratic Party’s election manifesto in 1936 proclaimed, inter alia: ‘We shall… guard against being drawn, by political commitments, international banking or private trading, into any war which may develop anywhere.’16 America refused to join Britain in a condemnation of Japan’s actions in Manchuria; declined to apply an oil embargo against Italy when that country invaded Abyssinia; avoided taking any stance in the Spanish Civil War; declined to protest against the ill-treatment of Jews in Germany; and when the Japanese attacked and sank an American gunboat, the USS Panay, off Shanghai in 1937, and then claimed it had all been a frightful mistake, American reaction was decidedly muted, a fact that was carefully noted by the Japanese. (They had also noted the result of the American naval exercise of 1932 when an aircraft carrier had evaded the guard ships and notionally sank the warships anchored in Pearl Harbor.) It was not that Roosevelt could not see the threat posed by fascism, particularly by Germany and Japan: he most certainly could see it, but he knew that, at least while America was still in the throes of Depression, he could not carry the country with him in any attempt to intervene.
In 1937 there was more serious labour unrest followed by a mini stock market crash and by the spring of 1938 5 million workers who had found jobs since Roosevelt came into office in 1933 had lost them, and 14 per cent of the workforce was on relief. While things were still better than they had been, the weaknesses in the economy were proving to be deeper and longer-lasting than anyone could have foretold. Fortunately for American business, however, affairs in Europe would soon point a way out of the Depression.
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In Germany the NSDAP government proceeded to do exactly what Hitler had said it would. In October 1933 Germany abruptly left both the League of Nations and the World Disarmament Conference. There was some huffing and puffing from the powers, but nobody did anything. In July 1934 an attempted coup by Austrian National Socialists failed, largely through the Italian dictator Mussolini making it clear by sending troops to the Brenner Pass that he was not ready to see a Greater Germany on his borders. In January 1935 German morale received a boost when voters in a League of Nations plebiscite in the Saarland, administered by the League as part of the Versailles settlement, were offered the choice of becoming French, returning to Germany or continuing with the status quo. Nine out of ten plumped for Germany. In June of the same year, to the fury of the French, the Anglo-German naval agreement allowed Germany to expand her surface fleet to 35 per cent of the size of the Royal Navy, and in the same month Germany re-introduced conscription and not so secretly re-formed the air force, the Luftwaffe – all clear violations of the Versailles Treaty. In March of the following year, 1936, there was even more blatant defiance when German troops marched into the Rhineland, that portion of Germany bordering on France which Versailles had ordered to be demilitarized to meet French security fears. The German generals crossed their fingers and even Hitler held his breath, but the Allies did nothing except harrumph ineffectually.
In July 1936 the Spanish army garrison in Morocco rebelled against the Popular Front Spanish government, a loose alliance of liberals, communists and socialists whose reforms had angered the landowners and the Catholic Church. German aircraft ferried the troops under General Francisco Franco from Spanish Morocco to Spain and continued to support him with aircraft and weapons, although not with troops on the ground. (Franco’s troops could not come by sea because the Spanish navy supported the Republicans.) In August, in Berlin, Germany hosted the Olympic Games, which were a triumph of propaganda and a message to all that Germany was back on the world stage, and in November Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, which was designed to counter the influence of the USSR.
In 1937 German Jews, having been dismissed from the professions and the civil service, were required to wear a yellow Star of David armband. Having been frustrated in 1934, Anschluss was finally achieved in March 1938 when German troops marched into Austria without a shot being fired. A subsequent referendum in Austria gave 99 per cent approval of the merger, and, even with the packing, threatening and blatant fiddling of the results that undoubtedly went on, there can be no doubt that the vast majority of Austrians really did want to be united with their German cousins. In the Munich agreement of September 1938 the British and French agreed to German demands that the Sudetenland, that portion of Czechoslovakia bordering on Germany and containing many ethnic Germans, be ceded to Germany, and pressured the Czech government into agreeing. While that government would have been delighted to get rid of its troublesome German minority, it was not at all happy to lose Czechoslovaki
a’s natural defences of the hills and rivers that made up the Sudeten strip.
It was now clear to Germany that the erstwhile Allies could be safely ignored – they were paper tigers, could do nothing and would do nothing. In November 1938 a German diplomat was assassinated in Paris by a German-Polish Jew, which precipitated Kristallnacht, an orgy of looting and destruction aimed at Jewish businesses and individuals. While the civilized world might have accepted polite discrimination against Jews, this sort of behaviour aroused widespread revulsion – which worried the Nazis not a jot. In March 1939 Germany encouraged the Slovaks to agitate for independence and the German army marched into Czechoslovakia. That state ceased to exist, being replaced by the German-administered Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia and the German client state of Slovakia. For the first time, any pretence that Hitler only wanted to reunite German people and erstwhile German territory was laid bare. The only possible reason for dissolving Czechoslovakia was to give Germany a jumping-off point for adventures in the East, as well, of course, as the opportunity to lay her hands on one of Europe’s most sophisticated arms industries. Then, in August 1939, to the amazement and consternation of the rest of Europe, Germany signed a mutual assistance treaty with the USSR. The public provisions not only contained a non-aggression clause but provided for the supply of raw materials and foodstuffs from the Soviet Union in return for manufactured goods and machine tools from Germany. The secret provisions divided Poland between Germany and the USSR at a time in the future. Now the centuries-old fear of German soldiers and statesmen of a war on two fronts was eliminated. Germany’s back door was secure.
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That the Germans were allowed to get away with blatant defiance of the Versailles Treaty, and that they were not stopped well short of war in 1939, is generally laid at the door of the pusillanimous British and the almost as pusillanimous French. But there is a very wide gulf between what one should do and what one can do. Popular misconception says that, if the Allies had acted militarily when Germany reoccupied the Rhineland, then Hitler’s war of conquest could never have happened. It is true that many German officers were against the reoccupation, and there was some idle talk in officers’ messes as to what might happen if it failed. The reality is that neither the French nor the British were in any state to intervene, militarily or otherwise. General Ironside, the Chief of the British General Staff, was quite clear that his men would be no match qualitatively or quantitatively for the Germans, and the French would not act unless the British did. In any case, the Rhineland was German; in January 1935 the British government had accepted that the continuation of a demilitarized Rhineland was not a vital British interest; it had been created to serve French and Belgian interests and was no concern of Britain’s. It would be reoccupied legitimately in a few years anyway and no one, bar the outcast Churchill and his eccentric clique, was prepared to go to war to prevent it happening now. Contrary to opinion then and since, it is most unlikely that the German troops in the Rhineland would have scuttled tamely home in the face of French or British intervention. On the contrary, even those few German battalions that had occupied the left (French) side of the Rhine had been instructed to fight.17 The whole force would have fought a determined and skilful defence, and, given the speedy build-up of the initial twelve battalions and supporting artillery into four divisions, would probably have been at least a match for whatever the Allies might have fielded.
The word ‘appeasement’ has become something of an insult, with connotations of craven cowardice and toadying to unpleasant bullies, but the word simply means the pacification of the potentially hostile and was a perfectly respectable political tool before it was made into a form of denigration by its failure in the 1930s. The British had generally recognized that much of the Versailles Treaty was unfair, and that the potentially largest and richest nation in continental Europe could not be ground down for ever. They wanted Germany to resume her place in the family of nations, and strove to help her to do so in a way that would suppress any latent revanchist tendencies. Here British policy diverged from that of the French, who were unrepentant, saw no reason why Germany should be forgiven or released from the strictures of Versailles and were convinced (rightly, as it turned out) that, given half a chance, Germany would be at their throats again. The first, half-baked, attempt to restrain German ambitions was the so-called Stresa Front, signed by Britain, France and Italy in April 1935, but it had no teeth and soon fell apart. In June of that same year Baldwin’s Conservatives won the British general election and Ramsay MacDonald’s coalition government was no more, the Labour opposition now being led by Clement Attlee.* Baldwin was a realist and a world - weary sceptic who had already been prime minister twice. Austen Chamberlain, who had good reason to dislike him, thought him ‘self-centred, selfish and idle, yet one of the shrewdest politicians, but without a constructive idea in his head and with an amazing ignorance of Indian and foreign affairs’.18 Austen’s half-brother, Neville, thought he had a singular and instinctive knowledge of how the plain man’s mind works’.19 Within days of becoming leader of the government Baldwin acceded to the Anglo-German Naval Agreement. Despite French anger, there was little else that the British could do. Germany was going to expand her navy regardless, and neither Britain nor anyone else was prepared to go to war to stop her. Better to agree some limitations than to stand back and do nothing at all. The Germans might, of course, sign the agreement and then ignore it, but that was a chance that was seen to be worth taking – after all, there were enough honourable old school diplomats in the German Foreign Office to make sure the agreement held.
Baldwin’s first real crisis in foreign affairs was the infamous Hoare–Laval Pact. Sir Samuel Hoare, the man who had saved the RAF when Secretary for Air, was now Foreign Secretary and, as he travelled to Switzerland for a holiday, called on the French foreign minister and acting premier, Pierre Laval. Between them, they hatched a plot to give a large part of Abyssinia to Italy, in the hope of thereby keeping Mussolini on their side as a counterweight to Hitler. The proposal was written down, both men initialled it and Hoare went on his way. It was unfortunate that the plan was almost immediately leaked, probably from the French side, and there was the most almighty kerfuffle in the British and French press and in both parliaments. There was much cant about poor little Abyssinia, the emphasis being on the fact that she was a Christian country, and great sympathy for the Emperor Haile Selassie. That Abyssinia was a backward, corrupt and oppressive autocracy that still tolerated slavery and that most emperors were either hopelessly inbred or mad (or both) was conveniently forgotten, and both Hoare and Laval had to resign. Mussolini was discommoded, continued his Abyssinian war anyway and moved closer to Hitler.*
For much of 1936 the attention of the British government was taken up with the problem of the new king, Edward VIII, who succeeded his father when George V died in January. Edward was idle, a playboy and probably not very bright. He was more interested in cheap popularity and the company of louche sycophants than in the traditional roles of a British monarch. King George had doubts about him, and the awful Mrs Simpson did the nation a great service by agreeing to marry him, and thus provoking his abdication in favour of his brother, George VI, a thoroughly good king who produced an excellent successor in Elizabeth II. Even when not engaged in trying to resolve the succession crisis, Baldwin tended to leave foreign affairs to his Foreign Secretary, Eden, who had replaced Hoare. Thus, as a result of the Abyssinian crisis, Italy drew closer to Germany, the Germans began to build the Siegfried Line to defend the Rhineland, the League of Nations was increasingly shown to have no clothes and still there was no serious attempt by the British or the French to bring the two European autocrats to heel. If France would not fight for the Rhineland – the last guarantee of her security – then, thought many, she would not fight at all. Belgium now abandoned her mutual assistance treaty with France and declared ‘independence’ – in effect, neutrality.
In May 1937 Baldwin resigned
and was replaced by Chamberlain, who had hitherto been Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is at Chamberlain’s door that most of the blame for ‘appeasement’ – by which was and is meant the failure to stop Hitler before it was too late – was and is laid, particularly by those who profited by Chamberlain’s later fall, namely Churchill and his supporters. In fact, Chamberlain was the first government minister to advocate rearmament, and he wanted to fight the 1935 election on that basis, but was dissuaded by Baldwin, who thought the voters would never stand for it. When one examines the newspapers of the time, particularly the letters columns, and the correspondence between the British and Dominion governments, it is abundantly clear that no British politician could have carried the country to war, or even to full-scale rearmament, at that time, and it is pointless, and unfair, to claim that the Second World War was all Chamberlain’s fault. If the Rhineland was not a casus belli for the British, then the union of the two German states, Germany and Austria, was certainly not one either, and as for the Sudeten question, resolved, so the British and French thought, by the Munich agreement of September 1938, then it was surely not unreasonable that the Sudeten Germans should be repatriated. The general view in Britain, and in the Empire, was that, while Hitler was clearly a vulgar populist, and his party was very tacky indeed, what he had done so far – the incorporation of Germans living on the borders of Germany into his Reich – was not unacceptable. It was a great pity that he had got what he demanded by threats, when he might well have got them by negotiation, but now that he had no further demands in Europe, things would quieten down and the Germans would revert to the normal diplomatic processes inherent in international relations.
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