by Tim Lynch
An anti-aircraft Bren gun team. Hore-Belisha spoke of how much better armed the modern BEF was compared to its 1914 predecessor, with 50 of these light machine guns per battalion. In reality, many battalions held just a handful.
Hore-Belisha’s policies were attacked by both the army and Parliament but frequently not because of any inherent fault in the logic behind them. Many of the men in senior army posts in the late thirties had never led formations of troops in combat and had instead been promoted on the strength of administrative or political skills and for them, the purge hit close to home. Men like Generals John Dill and John Gort – whose suitability for high rank in a wartime army was the subject of much private debate as war loomed – were alienated to the point that it was said Gort could not bear to be in the same room with the minister.
Chief among Hore-Belisha’s critics was Archibald Ramsay of the Conservative Party. Elected to the House of Commons in 1931, Ramsay had developed extreme right-wing political views and had become convinced that the Russian Revolution was the start of an international Communist plot to take over the world. In 1935, two German agents established an anti-Semitic group in the UK known as the White Knights of Britain or the Hooded Men – later to become the Nordic League. The Nordic League was primarily an upper-middle class association far removed from the working class British Union of Fascists but sharing the same ideas. Having introduced his Private Members’ ‘Aliens Restriction (Blasphemy) Bill’ in June 1938, Ramsay now turned his attention to Hore-Belisha and began a campaign to have him sacked as Secretary of War. In one speech on 27 April he warned that Hore-Belisha ‘will lead us to war with our blood-brothers of the Nordic race in order to make way for a Bolshevised Europe.’32 His efforts to, in his words, ‘clear the Conservative Party of Jewish influence’ would continue into 1940 but even after his eventual arrest and imprisonment he was influential enough to be able to submit questions to Parliament about Jews serving in the British Army and to have MPs prepared to demand his release.
Facing such opposition, Hore-Belisha continued to press ahead with plans to develop the armed forces. One of the effects of the First World War had been to create a decline in the birth rate between 1915 and 1919 that now showed itself as a shortage of men aged 21–26 – the prime age for fighting troops – and normal recruitment could not meet this gap. Conscription legislation put in place to supply manpower for the First World War had lapsed in 1920 and there had been no need to reconsider it but now, for the first time in its history, Britain was forced to put plans in place for the introduction of peacetime conscription. The initial plans put forward in 1938 were blocked by Chamberlain, who refused to allow any increase in defence spending beyond that already agreed and who still believed that appeasement could work, but the rapidly deteriorating international situation after Czechoslovakia changed things.
Prime Minister Chamberlain returns from Munich.
With the increasing German threat after Munich, Britain’s plans had to be quickly reconsidered. The initial plan, based on that outlined by the DRC back in the early 1930s, envisaged sending only two advance divisions before a declaration of war followed by up to ten more to be sent in two batches, one sixty days after the outbreak and the next about six months into the war.
Perhaps not surprisingly given its frontline position in any war, France was clearly unhappy about Britain’s proposed level of commitment to European defence. British Ambassador Sir Eric Phipps had reported to London in September 1938 that ‘all that is best in France is against war, almost at any price’ and that they were being opposed only by a ‘small, but noisy and corrupt, war group’.33 He went on to say that the small size of the projected British Expeditionary Force had convinced some French observers that ‘France can only rely on Great Britain to fight to the last Frenchman.’34 As French General Henri-Fernand Dentz put it, ‘France does not intend to allow England to fight her battles with French soldiers.’35 Reinforcing this belief, French statistics apparently showed that the British government was only preparing to mobilise at no more than one-fifth of the rate France planned to, a claim angrily rejected by the British in bilateral discussions. General Edmund Ironside, who would be appointed Chief of the Imperial General Staff in September, noted that:
When Reynaud was recently in England he had complained that whereas one man in eight was mobilized in France, only one in forty was mobilized in England; but, on going into his figures, it was found that Reynaud had included police, railway and dock workers, etc., in the French mobilisation who were not included in the British figures. When these were eliminated, the proportions were much about the same.36
Phipps’s damning assessment of France’s lack of willingness or even its ability to go to war with Germany in 1938 had already created major doubts in London about the value of France as an ally but for their part, the French regarded Britain’s strategy for another long, defensive war of attrition to be a real danger to them. France could not afford such a luxury if it was to emerge from the coming war with its economy in any fit state to rebuild itself. As a result, it became clear that France wanted help in the short term rather than the promised long-haul approach the British were offering and Charles Corbin, the highly experienced ambassador in London, recommended to Daladier in January 1939 that he should remind the British as often as possible about ‘the inequality of sacrifice to which our two populations would have to consent in time of war’.37
With the situation across Europe rapidly deteriorating France’s resolve seemed to be faltering. Guided by Phipps’ comments, Britain now sought to reassure France of its full support in order to prevent it seeking any sort of accommodation with Hitler and so, on 8 March 1939, during the Parliamentary debate on the Army Estimates for the following financial year, Hore-Belisha announced:
It will now be convenient to appraise the dimensions of the field force [to be sent to France in the event of war]. The whole, or any part of it, will be used, of course, as and how the future may require, but this is the size of the instrument our plans are shaping: Regular, four infantry divisions and two armoured divisions; Territorial, nine infantry divisions, three motorised divisions and an armoured division. In addition, there are two Territorial cavalry brigades, and a number of unbrigaded units, Regular and Territorial – making more than nineteen divisions in all. Mr Haldane projected a field force of six Regular divisions and one cavalry division only. He had not equipped the Territorial force for a European war. Our Territorial Army will be so equipped.38
The French were delighted by the implied promise of nineteen divisions whilst the German military attaché ‘listening in the diplomats’ gallery, was observed to be completely stunned, which is not surprising’.39 Although plans had already been discussed the previous week with the CID for an eventual commitment of 32 divisions or even as many as 55, Hore-Belisha’s apparent offer of 19 divisions in the short term was seen by senior commanders as little more than a political gambit.40 General Henry Pownall, who would become Chief of Staff to Lord Gort when war broke out, noted in his diary in April that it may be ‘Better late than never, but late it is, for it will take at least eighteen months more … before this paper army is an army in the flesh.’41 General Ironside argued that it would take another year for Britain to provide even fifteen combat-ready divisions.
On 27 April 1939, Hore-Belisha secured the agreement of the Cabinet to allow restricted conscription on a temporary basis and on 26 May Royal Assent was given to a Military Training Act that would apply to males aged 20 and 21 years old.42 They were to be called up for six months full-time military training before being transferred to the Army Reserve and released from service. The Act was intended to be temporary for a period of three years unless an Order in Council declared it was no longer necessary before the Act expired.
By 1918, there had been four British armies made up, in Richard Holmes’ phrase, of the ‘old, new, borrowed and blue’. The remnants of the old, pre-war professional army were still figures of influence but h
ad been joined in 1915 by the ‘borrowed’ men of the Territorial Army, whose terms of service did not require them to serve overseas unless they chose to do so. In 1916 came the ‘new’ army of men who had answered Kitchener’s call and, after the horrors of the Somme, came the first of the ‘blue’ – conscripts enlisted involuntarily by new legislation to fill the gaps in the ranks of the old, new and Territorial Armies. This time, it was decided, there would be an integrated army from the outset. By using the time available to create and train a reserve force, Britain would, like its European neighbours, have a ready made pool of trained soldiers if and when it needed them.
As staff talks between British and French commanders progressed in four phases between late March and late August 1939 markedly divergent views on the deployment of the BEF in France quickly emerged. The British concentrated on planning for the medium and long term so as to allow time to create, train and deploy the later echelons of the big ‘Belisha army’ as a complete fighting force. Gamelin, in contrast, had a much more short-term agenda. He prioritised first and foremost the move to France of the limited forces actually available in 1939: five regular divisions and the first four divisions of Territorials. For his part Lord Gort – at that time Chief of the Imperial General Staff – shared the view that Britain should quickly deploy whatever it had available. Opposing them, and by now accused by his critics of assuming the role of a latter day Kitchener, Hore-Belisha was said to be less concerned with the best interests of the strategic military situation than with calculating the political good for his own ministerial career of being seen as the father of the revitalised British Army.
Churchill, like the French High Command, cared mainly about numbers. For him, the prospect of being able – albeit not until at least 1941 – to put a large army into the field alongside the French salved at least some of the humiliation of the failure of appeasement. In Paris for the Bastille Day parade of 14 July 1939, Pownall reported hearing Churchill mutter ‘Thank God we’ve got conscription or we wouldn’t be able to look these people in the face.’43 Later, he would write, ‘Britain’s introduction of conscription … did not give us an army … It was, however, a symbolic gesture of the utmost consequence to France and Poland.’44
By August, amicable agreements were reached about the size and speed of the deployment of the BEF, with Pownall announcing that the first two divisions were now expected to arrive nineteen days after mobilisation and the whole Regular Army contingent in thirty-four days.45 Compared to France’s 117 available divisions of varying quality or even to the 10 Dutch divisions or the 22 divisions ‘little Belgium’ was able to field (despite its declared neutrality), the BEF was little more than a gesture but it was recognised as representing the best that Britain had available at the time.46 This tiny contribution forced BEF commanders to defer to the French High Command on matters of policy and in particular to their commander-in-chief General Maurice Gamelin, who freely admitted that he was relying on any future war being confined initially to the east before spreading westwards, in order to buy time for mobilisation.
When war came on 3 September, as agreed, the BEF began to mobilise and advance elements arrived in France to organise the lines of communication and set up base areas. In 1914, the original BEF had been in action against the advancing Germans just sixteen days after war was declared. This time, with Germany occupied in subduing the Poles, it would take nineteen days before the first combat troops even reached French shores. By the time the first British infantrymen reached their assigned positions in northern France, the first – and only – French offensive of the war had already ended.
The Franco-Polish military convention held that when war came the French Army would immediately begin preparations for a major offensive and on the fifteenth day after mobilisation began they were to launch a full-scale assault on Germany itself. Pre-emptive mobilisation was declared in France on 26 August and full mobilisation began on 1 September. Four days after war was declared, a French offensive pushed into the Rhine valley. With the Wehrmacht fully engaged in Poland, Germany had just 22 divisions along the French border and no armoured forces of any kind, but instead of pushing home their huge numerical advantage, the French advanced along a 32-kilometre line in the Saarbrücken area against weak German opposition and penetrated about eight kilometres into Germany. They captured approximately 20 abandoned villages before stalling after the Anglo-French Supreme War Council gathered for the first time at Abbeville on 12 September and agreed that all offensive actions were to be halted immediately.
The Phoney War had begun.
NOTES
1 Hammerton, Sir John. The Second Great War Vol 1 London: Waverley c.1941 p208–211
2 Ibid p212
3 Montgomery, B.L. The Memoirs of Field Marshal the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, KG London: Companion Books 1958 p44
4 Ibid p43
5 HMSO The NCOs Musketry Small Book London: 1915 pp3, 103 quoted in Holmes, R. Tommy London: HarperCollins, 2004 p345
6 Bryant, A. The Turn of the Tide 1939–43 London: Collins 1957 p67
7 Terraine, J. To Win a War: 1918 The Year of Victory London: Macmillan 1978 p14
8 Hansard House of Commons Debate 03 March 1919 vol 113 cc69–184
9 HC Deb 07 July 1919 vol 117 cc1567–70
10 HC Deb 11 December 1919 vol 122 cc1743–58
11 HC Deb 15 December 1919 vol 123 cc87–147
12 Henry Higgs, ‘The Geddes Reports and the Budget’, The Economic Journal, Vol. 32, No. 126. (Jun., 1922), p253
13 Ibid ‘Introduction’
14 Barnett, C., The Collapse of British Power London: Eyre Methuen, 1972 p297
15 National Army Museum. Against All Odds London: National Army Museum 1990 p6
16 Ibid
17 Barnett, op cit. p. 301
18 Paul Kennedy, The Realities behind Diplomacy (Fontana, 1981) p231
19 HC Deb 06 July 1932 vol 268 cc515–9
20 HC Deb 10 March 1932 vol 262 cc2007–73
21 HC Deb 15 March 1932 vol 263 cc241–2
22 Kennedy, P. The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Penguin, 2004), p285
23 Reported in The Times, 11 November 1932, p7
24 DRC report (DRC 14), 28 February 1934, CAB 4/23 in Dilemmas of Appeasement: British Deterrence and Defense, 1934–1937 Gaines Post Jr Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. 1993 p32
25 Ibid. p33
26 Hammerton, op cit p135
27 Inskip. Defence Expenditure in Future Years, Interim Report By The Minister For Co-Ordination of Defence, C.P. 316(37), Cab. 24/273 quoted in Sebastian Cox ‘British Military Planning and the Origins of the Second World War’ in B.J.C. Coercer & Roch Legault. Military Planning and the Origins of the Second World War in Europe Westport CT: Praeger, 2001 p117
28 McKersher, B.J.C. ‘The Limitations of the Politician-Strategist: Winston Churchill and the German Threat 1933–1939’ in Michael I. Handel, John H. Maurer (eds) Churchill and Strategic Dilemmas Before the World Wars: Essays in Honor of Michael I. Handel London: Routledge, 2003 p105
29 Hankey to Prime Minister, 28 April 1938, in CAB 21, 554 14/4/13, PRO. Emphases and exclamation original.
30 Howard, M. 1972 The Continental commitment: The dilemma of British defense policy in the era of two world wars London:Temple Smith p127
31 Hawes, L.A. ‘The Story of the “W Plan”: The Move of Our Forces to France in 1939.’ Army Quarterly 101 (1970–71): 445–56
32 http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRramsayA2.htm
33 Adamthwaite, A. France and the coming of the Second World War, 1936–39 London: Frank Cass 1977, p177
34 Phipps to Halifax, 16 November 1938, FO 371 21600 C 14025/55/17, PRO
35 Adamthwaite 1977, p246
36 Gates, E.M. The end of the affair: The collapse of the Anglo-French alliance, 1939–40 London: George Allen and Unwin 1981, p29 Ironside quote from MacLeod, R & Kelly, D (Eds) Time Unguarded: The Ironside Diaries, 1937–1940. New York: D. McKay 1963 p
162
37 Corbin to Daladier, 26 Jan. 1939, in Etat-Major de L’Armée: 2e Bureau – Grande- Bretagne, Carton 7N 2816, SHAT
38 Hansard H.C. Deb 08 March 1939 vol 344 cc2161–302
39 Blaxland, G. Destination Dunkirk: The Story of Gort’s Army London Military Book Society 1973 p23
40 ‘Committee for Imperial Defense Strategical Appreciation Sub-committee Procedure for Meeting to be held on the 1st March, 1939,’ section 6, FO 371 22923 C2751/281/17, PRO. For the Hore-Belisha statement, see also Adamthwaite, 1977, Op cit. p253.
41 Bond, B. (Ed) Chief of Staff: The Diaries of Lieutenant General Sir Henry Pownal London: Leo Cooper 1972 p178
42 Hansard H.C. Deb 26 May 1939 vol 347 c2703)
43 Recorded by Pownall (see Bond, Chief of Staff, I, p213, diary entry of 10 July 1939)
44 Churchill, W.S. The Second World War: The Gathering Storm (London, 1948), pp.318–319
45 Bond, B. British Military Policy Between the Two World Wars Oxford: OUP 1980 p319–20
46 Freiser, K-H. The Blitzkrieg Legend Anapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press 2005 p36
Chapter Two
Wagging the Dog
Even before the last Polish resistance in the east had been crushed, Hitler was urging his generals to turn and strike west. Like Britain and France, Germany had huge deficiencies in its forces, but Hitler was convinced that if he attacked immediately his forces had enough momentum to break through. The success in Poland had been astonishing but Army Chief of Staff General Franz Halder advised caution, noting in his diary; ‘The techniques of Polish Campaign [are] no recipe for the West. No good against a well-knit army.’1 In fact, German High Command were, like their British and French counterparts, strongly of the opinion that no offensive would be possible in the west for some time – many suggesting the Spring of 1942 as being the earliest a successful attack on the Franco-Belgian defence lines could be mounted.2 For Hitler, to delay courted disaster since, he thought, within six to eight months the Allies would be powerful enough to withstand a German attack and the result would be a long, drawn-out affair that Germany could not afford. By 1939, the country was still short of trained men and war material and it was clear that it could not withstand a lengthy blockade that would starve it not only of food but also of the raw materials for weapons production – in the official German account of the campaign, Karl-Heinz Freiser claims that of the 30 most important materials for the armaments industry, Germany had only seven in adequate quantities. Determined to finish the war quickly, on 27 September Hitler announced to his staff that he intended to attack as soon as possible and set a provisional date of 25 November. After much persuasion, his commanders were able to negotiate a series of what would amount to 29 postponements over the coming winter in order to buy the time they needed to prepare their forces.3