France And The Origins Of The Second World War

 France And The Origins Of The Second World War

 Introduction

 

John Keegan once wrote, “The history of The Second World War has not yet been written.  Perhaps in the next century it will be.  Today, although fifty years have elapsed since it ended, the passions it aroused still run too high, the wounds it inflicted still cut too deep, and the unresolved problems it left still bulk too large for any one historian to strike an objective balance.”¹  

 

This paper will not pretend to be a completely objective analysis of the history of France’s march into the Second World War.  While objectivity will be the goal, pure objectivity is simply impossible for any human being – everyone operates, to some extent at least, hand-in-hand with their own personal bias.  Even the description of the pre-World War Two period as a “march” by France to war should betray the author’s thinking in that regard.  While not striving to be the last word, this paper will, nonetheless, hopefully contribute to the question of the role that France played in bringing Europe to war in September of 1939.

 

In terms of organization, the paper starts with an historiography divided into three sections including the specific and in-depth histories of France up to and including the Battle of France; the more general histories of the interwar years, both military and diplomatic; and the “conspiracy theories” regarding France’s defeat which still abound. 

 

Regarding the historiography, it may be said that few areas of modern historical analysis and commentary have attracted such wide-ranging and sustained interest as France’s defeat at the start of World War Two, although this may be less so in France than in the rest of the world.  The history of the interwar period has attracted somewhat less interest than the Battle of France itself; nevertheless, this topic has also stimulated a thorough historiography starting with the publishing of various “conspiracy theories” in the months following the defeat. 

 

The reasons for this wide-ranging interest should be obvious.  The history of the Battle of France, and the interwar period leading up to it, are incredibly compelling, containing within them elements of the evolution of modern warfare; a deeply complex and disturbing diplomacy; politics animated from all points of the political compass; and from the perspective of the final outcome, pathos and disaster worthy of a Greek tragedy.  In terms of the sustained interest that this has generated, France’s role in the origins of the Second World War, and the Battle of France itself, may be comparable to the history of the RMS Titanic, without the ship. 

 

The second part of the paper will look at the evidence – in short, what is it possible to say about France and the origins of the war, up to the Battle of France.  In order to bring some semblance of order to this exploration, the analysis will specifically ask whether or not France was trying to march toward war in the years immediately prior to September of 1939 and will argue in the affirmative.  This represents a break from the vast history written on the subject to date, where it is almost universally assumed that France was simply attacked by a Germany bent on aggression.  The goal here is not to prove to anything like a finality that France wanted and brought on the war, but simply to ascertain if this even can be effectively argued. 

 

The Historiography

 

There has been a wealth of books and articles written about France in the interwar period, up to and including the Battle of France in May and June 1940.  All aspects have been covered, from the relative military strengths and preparedness; to the diplomacy leading to the war; to the internal politics of each nation involved in this tragedy and particularly the internal politics of France, including the leaders and their motivations, their honesty, their stupidities, their genius, and in the end, their hopelessness.  What follows is a summary and commentary on just a fraction of the sources available – to review all could be a life’s work, and is simply impossible. 

 

It should be kept in mind that the history of France and the origins of the Second World War written to date does not expressly touch on the question that will be explored later in the paper regarding France and its possible march to war – again, virtually every single author assumes that France was responding to German aggression throughout the period.  The purpose here is not to explore why this issue has almost nowhere been explored to date, but to simply present what has been said over the past 6 decades.

 

The In-Depth Histories:  A very large number of detailed histories concerning France and the world up to and including the Battle of France are in existence, including: From Versailles to Vichy – The Third French Republic, 1919 – 1940 by Nathanael Greene; The Fall of France – The Nazi Invasion of 1940 by Julian Jackson; The Battle of France, 1940 by Philip Warner; France and the Origins of the Second World War by Robert J. Young; Strange Defeat by Ernest May;  The Collapse of The Third Republic by William Shirer; and To Lose A Battle – France 1940 by Alistair Horne. 

 

Of these sources, the works by Horne and Shirer, and the more recent publication by Jackson are superior, with Horne’s and Shirer’s work having become essential reading on this topic, and a Jackson’s likely to achieve the same status in due course.  Let us start with Horne.

 

The greatness of Horne’s work is found in the breathtaking detail into which he explored his topic, the way he organized his work, and the quality of his writing.  Consider the following, which is Horne’s description of the end of the Phony War, and the relative condition of the two major combatants on the morning of May 10, 1939:

 

So the scene opens on the confrontation of the century, of which the Great War – the Marne, Verdun, the Somme, Passchendaele and Amiens – was perhaps but a thunderous overture.  On one side, France, a nation divided and with little heart for war, led by a Premier weakened by influenza and his mistress, who had offered his resignation, and by a Generalissimo under suspended sentence; guarded by an Army whose morale was to say the least patchy, weak in number and equipment, guided by outdated doctrine and commanded by mediocre leaders, and by an Air Force outclassed in every respect; and supported by a solitary ally who could still only contribute a handful of divisions to the coming battle.  On the other side, a revolutionary Germany led by a daemonic prophet possessed of total self-assurance, but supported by professional soldiers many of them nervous, hostile and not sharing their Fuhrer’s certainty of success; equipped with a superlative war machine, but with relatively far fewer elite divisions than the Kaiser’s army which had lumbered into Belgium a generation earlier; and marching to one of the most brilliant war plans of all time – but one so risky that any setback to it, any breaking of the steel cutting-edge of Guderian’s Panzers, could but end in another calamitous defeat for Germany.²  

 

This introduction is complete in scope, and masterly in terms of its imagery and of Horne’s personal sense of the impending clash.  It is highly theatrical, and its effectiveness consists in the extent to which the reader is drawn to experience the event at a personal level, not as an actual participant, but as an observer whose interest has been successfully piqued.  By way of this introduction, Horne leads the reader through each major aspect of the coming confrontation, from the major weaknesses of the French, to the relative strengths and risks inherent in the German position.  It is consistent with his approach announced right from the start of his work, which is to see the Battle of France as part of a longer 70-year struggle between Germany and France which stretched back to 1870.  This thesis, proposed by Horne in 1969, still carries weight today.  Although more time has now passed since the publishing of the book than had passed between its publishing and the war itself, it remains required reading on the topic.

 

Jackson’s The Fall of France – The Nazi Invasion of 1940 is close to Horne’s work in terms of its level of detail, and effectiveness of presentation.  Unlike Horne’s work, which concentrated more on the history of the battle itself, Jackson’s work is more concerned with the various explanations for the final result, and with an exploration of the circumstances surrounding the defeat.  While Horne therefore starts at the end of the First World War, consistent with his seeing this as part of a confrontation extending back to the Franco-Prussian War, Jackson starts with the first announcement of French defeat by Paul Reynaud to Winston Churchill on May 15, 1940.³

 

In exploring the defeat, Jackson divides his work into 2 parts: “The Story”, and “Causes, Consequences and Counterfactuals”.  He includes chapters on “The Politics of Defeat”, and “The French People at War” which serve to give a concise picture of the non-military and societal aspects of the war.  He also includes a discussion of the place of the battle in modern memory, with an emphasis on how historians and others have seen it.  The result is a more complete picture than that presented by Horne; Jackson’s is a successful expansion of the scope beyond “The Story”, which serves to give a powerful sense of the defeat as a military, social, political and even cultural experience, as oppose to the more personal or even theatrical experience that is Horne’s work.

 

More than that, Jackson’s work seeks to challenge orthodoxy around the issue of the defeat, and to argue, in short, that defeat was not inevitable.⁴  The defeat is blamed by Jackson on incompetence regarding the interpretation of intelligence clearly indicated where and when the Germans were going to attack; a French plan that was risky in the extreme; a failure to respond adequately to the attack when it came; and more generally, “…almost the entire French High Command had been caught unawares by the new kind of warfare.”⁵  Regarding the politics of France prior to the war, Jackson thinks that this had more influence on the consequences of the defeat, than on the defeat itself.⁶

 

Given that Jackson’s work was limited to the military confrontation and the resulting defeat, Jackson is likely correct in his assertion which was to the effect that the French lost due to the inabilities of the French high command – then again, someone had to lose, and it is somewhat trite to imply that they may have won.  His work stands out not because of this central conclusion, but because he did not limit his analysis to just the military aspects of the defeat but presents a thorough exploration of the entire matter which effectively lifts the entire work.

 

William Shirer’s work, The Collapse of the Third Republic was published the same year as the work of Horne.  While his work promises an exploration of the collapse of the Third Republic, thereby implying an exploration of the time period prior to 1940, in fact it is much broader in scope.  Shirer reaches all the way back to the founding of the Third Republic in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War in his search for conclusions as to its final demise at the end of another German-French battle. 

 

In this, Shirer is much like Horne who also looks back 70 years in order to ascertain the reasons for what eventually happened to the Third Republic.  His conclusion as to why the Republic collapsed is simple, and is neatly summarized when he wrote, “The Third republic was dead.  It had committed suicide.  Proclaimed on September 4, 1870, after the disastrous defeat by Prussia, in had lasted 70 years, longer than any other regime since the glorious revolution.  And then, as suddenly as it had been born, it fell apart after being crushed by the same enemy from across the Rhine. ”⁷    

 

While his summary may be concise, some other aspects of this work, and in particular the question of who was the driving force behind this suicide, is not.  Along with Shirer’s thesis about the sudden collapse of the Third Republic is the very strong suggestion throughout his work that the military and the political Right in France constituted a perpetual threat to the existence of the regime from 1870 to 1940.  The reason that Shirer goes back 70 years then, is to catalogue the nature of this threat, culminating in its victory over the Left and Republican strains in French political thought in July of 1940, with the establishment of the Vichy regime.  While Jackson believes that French politics mattered only after the defeat, Shirer believes that it was integral to the final collapse.

 

Shirer notes, for example, General Weygand’s remark regarding the demise of the Third Republic when he said that, “I didn’t get the Boches, but I got the regime.”⁸  Rather than simply leaving the reader to ponder this bald statement, Shirer explores Weygand’s inflexibility surrounding the very real question of whether or not the French should fight on from North Africa after the defeat in Metropolitan France in June 1940.  He notes that,

 

General Weygand not only opposed – successfully – the French government moving to North Africa; he not only convinced the Petain government that the defence of the Empire across the  Mediterranean was impossible and that, as he said ‘to move the war to North Africa would be to lose it’; he not only squelched general Nogues, the Commander in Chief on the spot, who at first wanted to continue the war from there; but he misrepresented Nogues’ views to the cabinet as a crucial moment when the decision to go or not to go to Africa hung in the balance.⁹ 

 

Shirer also catalogues the intrigues and manipulations of Laval in the days immediately prior to the end of the Third Republic and the establishment of the Vichy regime.  This included playing on French anger after the British sank the bulk of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir to prevent it falling into German or Italian hands; threats of a military coup by Weygand; and his strong arguments to the effect that the establishment of a new order to match that being established in the rest of Europe was required if France was to survive.¹⁰  In the end, the National Assembly voted overwhelmingly to permit the drafting of a new constitution by Petain – 569 to 80, with 17 abstentions.¹¹  The Third Republic was dead, and the Vichy regime established.

 

Shirer’s work has much strength, including the tremendous scope of the work, his reliance on much previously secret material, and the fact that, as a journalist, he was a personal witness to many of the events about which he writes.  It also has some weaknesses, including the obvious sympathy that he has for the Left and Republican views regarding the nature of the defeat and the establishment of Vichy, and in term of some of his sources, he included French intelligence reports as culled and released to the world by the Germans after the defeat of France.¹²  Overall however, if one reads Shirer with a view to his sympathies, this is a tremendously helpful source, supplying much of the necessary context and specifics required to breathe life into many of the opinions surrounding the reason for the collapse of the Third Republic.

 

Of the other works, Greene’s Versailles to Vichy – The Third French Republic, 1919 – 1940 is a straight-forward attempt to cut through the various “conspiracy theories” which abounded following the war, in order to discern a more basic cause for the defeat.  Like Jackson, he assigns blame to an inept French military, as follows,

 

The charge, made by the Vichy regime and echoed by some historians, that the politicians were largely responsible for the defeat of 1940 has been shown to be false: the defeat was essentially a military defeat, owing to the helpless inability of the military leaders either to envision the conduct of modern warfare or to execute their own plans smoothly: France was not disarmed or permitted by her politicians to fall behind in armaments, although none of them challenged the military’s view of what was required to modernize the thinking of the officers.¹³ 

 

Greene did think that this collapse was inevitable, however, and differs from Jackson on this point.¹⁴  He also noted that the “conspiracy theories”, which are covered below and which flourish even today – apparently everyone and no one was responsible for the defeat – miss the extremely important military, strategic and diplomatic aspects of the debacle, and what Greene calls “…the near-certainty of Nazi domination over Europe.”¹⁵ 

 

In essence, Greene looked to “the big picture” – to concepts and historical movements - and discerned inevitabilities.  While laudable in that it takes its cue from an application of a form of reason to this historical issue, his approach is ultimately unsatisfying.  Ideas and concepts do not make war, people do, and people are not perfectly rational.  While there is a role for the study of movements and ideas and their effects on history, it is people who are the wild-card who make so much of history barely explicable. 

 

A recent work by Philip Warner, The Battle of France, 1940, stands outside of the realm of works like those of Horne, Shirer, Jackson or even Greene.  It does contain some interesting notions regarding the role of Lord Gort in the British retreat from France, and a useful exploration of the fighting around Dunkirk – an issue that has barely been covered as a topic of historical endeavor.  Regardless of this, much of Warner’s work is essentially revisionist history without a sense of responsibility.  The following quote may serve to illustrate the point,

 

…between 1914 and 1918 the Germans had twice been close to overwhelming France, but had eventually failed.  When they did so in 1940 the speed and expertise of the campaign made the German Army seem invincible, but in fact the success of the German war machine in France proved to be its own undoing; it gave the impression that they had produced an army which no other country would ever be able to match.  The chief victims of this delusion were the Germans themselves; the rapid victory in France convinced the doubters in the Reich that Hitler was right, that he was the man to make Germany the greatest power on earth, and that he was invincible.¹⁶

 

The issue here is not with whether or not this thesis is actually correct – there is likely some truth to this.  The problem is with how it is written, and the fact that it is virtually unsupported by the very book in which it appears. 

 

As written, the above assertion could have appeared as a part of any Allied propaganda after about 1942 – in short, the Germans were the chief victims of the Battle of France, not the Allies.  In terms of the evidence, the fact that the Germans later lost the war seems to be the only “proof” offered for this assertion.  Nowhere, for example, are German generals quoted as saying that they became disciples of Hitler after 1940.  For Warner, it is the victory in France that drove Hitler on; the effect of Mein Kampf on Hitler’s intentions, for example, is apparently irrelevant. 

 

At the end of his work, Warner discusses what would have happened if the Germans had been held by the French, and stalemate ensued.  It is not worth quoting any of this, other than to mention that in the last line of his work Warner thanks France for losing, and even Hitler for invading.¹⁷  This is an author for whom the logic of events is in the events themselves – one need look no further than to what happened in order to discern why this was so.  This is no more complex than simply stating that “stuff happened” and “other stuff could have happened”.  From the perspective of this paper, it is worth noting that histories such as Warner’s reinforce many of the founding myths that inform historic, and therefore modern, debates around international relations in Western society.  Works such as this are silly, yet powerful because they do not require that the reader think, only that they agree. 

 

Another recent work by Ernest R. May, Strange Victory – Hitler’s Conquest of France, sides with Jackson in his assertion that the defeat was not inevitable.  As a result of his complete and exhaustively-researched work, May reached the rather simple conclusion that “France capitulated in 1940 because its armies were defeated in battle.”¹⁸  Note here that he is not talking about the military defeat itself, but more than that, he is specifically referring to the political capitulation that immediately followed, and in this he agrees with Jackson, and stands in opposition to Shirer.  He continues and notes that, regarding the historic debate about the collapse,

 

Many writers on the fall of France do not accept this simple-seeming assertion, for they portray France’s defeats on the battlefield as the last gasps by a nation already doomed.  I think such an interpretation is wrong.  Perhaps if things had been different in the ‘hollow years’, France’s capitulation might not have been so abrupt, or more French leaders might have chosen to continue to fight the war from a French base in North Africa, or fewer might have toadied to their Nazi conquerors.  But, absent defeats in battle in May 1940, France was in no more danger of moral collapse than Britain, it seems to me, and in less danger than Germany. ¹⁹

 

In his work, May seeks to debunk three overall historic conclusions, as he sees them.  The first is that the German’s had a crushing superiority.  The second was that the French and the Allies were badly led.  The third was that the French people had no desire to fight.²⁰ 

 

Ignoring the fact that by the year 2000 the first of these was hardly an historic conclusion any longer, and the fact that the second was always debatable, regarding the third - that is that the French people had no desire to fight - May states that he seeks to complement a work by Marc Bloch entitled Strange Defeat (reviewed below).  In this work, Bloch outlines the failings of the various elements of French society in responding to the German challenge.  In this regard May states that,

 

My book is intended as a complement to Bloch’s, not a challenge to it, for the only serious defects in Bloch’s analysis were due to his understandable lack of awareness of weaknesses on the German side.  He did not appreciate that it was in many ways easier to tick off French vulnerabilities that to explain how a disorganized, divided German government, poorly equipped for war, managed to identify those vulnerabilities, take advantage of them, and achieve the equivalent of a successful Pearl Harbor attack – that is, a victory of the weak over the strong.²¹

 

How then may we consider May’s work? 

 

His book is, in a word, odd - even strange.  The title suggests an exploration of the actual military conquest, yet the work itself gives slight attention to this, with May himself declaring, as regards the fighting after May 14, 1940, that, “The rest of the story of the battle of France can be abbreviated.”²²  Given that this “rest of the story” was the actual completion of the conquest itself which is supposed to be the topic of the book, this is rather odd.

 

Not only that, but May’s work does not really do what it seeks to do, and one is left wondering why.  It is supposed to be a book about Hitler’s conquest of France which will instead explore the thesis that there was no French moral collapse leading to the capitulation.  Yet the book concludes with lessons and “morals of the story” most of which are based on “what ifs”, and most of which have nothing at all to do with French morale and how it was not a factor.  Again, France lost so it capitulated – end of story.  The book is therefore confusing.  It is as if the question of a possible French moral and political collapse is nothing more than an interlude between the description of the competing battle plans, military preparedness and leadership on the one hand, and a description of the final crushing defeat on the other, in what would have otherwise been a rather complete battle narrative. 

 

In short, this work appears to be a number of books molded into one, all in search of a satisfying joint conclusion which, in spite of nine lessons and numerous morals, is never provided.  As was noted in regards to Jackson’s work, saying that France collapsed because it was defeated is helpful, but it does not really tell us very much.  Talking about a political collapse occasioned by a military defeat without exploring the politics of the situation in detail – that is, without exploring other possible reasons for the political collapse - tells us almost nothing at all.

 

More disturbing than this, however, is May’s chapter on Allied intelligence.  He sees many specifics, but perhaps misses the overall point.  While he does an admirable job at exploring the various short-comings in the abilities of the French and British staffs in digesting what they were hearing from their intelligence officers, the idea that it was the purpose of the Allied intelligence services to both interpret and deceive seems never to have crossed his mind – for May, the only deception was on the German side. 

 

More seriously, the bona fides of the Allied intelligence staffs, who of necessity serve the political arm of government before they serve the military, remains unquestioned.  Although May notes that the Deuxieme Bureau was “more nearly a genuine central intelligence agency”²³, May never once asks whether or not the intelligence officers were actually doing exactly what they were told to do all along – by the politicians themselves.  Related to this, the idea that France may have wanted this confrontation seems never to have occurred to him, even though May, unlike most of the other authors reviewed thus far, has ample evidence within his own work that could point to this possibility.  For May, the only aggressor was Germany, in spite of his own reminders that the French were actually supremely confident, even arrogant, in early May of 1940.²⁴

 

Finally, many of May’s conclusions, beyond being based on “what ifs” are also not supported by his book.  For example, he states that “After Group Kleist broke the Meuse River and began racing westward, there remained possibilities for the Allies to regroup, launch a counteroffensive, and keep the war going.”²⁵  As noted, May does not explore the actual battle in depth, especially in the period after the 14^th of May, 1940 – the day the Germans crossed the Meuse.  The basis for his conclusion that a regrouping and counterattack was possible in mid-May 1940, absent an analysis of positions, capabilities, supplies, and the ability to limit interference by the German airforce, is unclear.  The fact that both the French and British actually tried counterattacks and failed seems to illustrate nothing to May about the perceived potentialities of this very approach.  In fact, May’s suggestion here, as elsewhere, is nothing more than baseless opinion masquerading as a rational conclusion.  Although beautifully researched, and with some useful points to it, this is an inferior piece of history.

 

The last work covered in this section is France and the Origins of the Second World War by Robert J. Young.  Young was chosen partially because he is Canadian, but his work also stands with the likes of Greene’s work, and certainly above that of Warner and May.  In terms of his approach, and the contribution that he makes, Young’s takes an all-encompassing approach to the question and he explored, in depth, aspects including the military and diplomatic aspects leading up to the war, economic influences and the effects of politics and ideology, and, finally, public perceptions and the public mood. 

 

The central theme of the work is the ambivalence of the French nation prior to the war.  In deciding to highlight this aspect, Young has managed to capture the essence of France in the pre-war period.  In doing so, he has managed to avoid many of the pitfalls of other authors and to conclude, regarding the French and the origins of the war, as follows:

 

I have offered a more complex explanation, one that does not rely on conspirators and traitors, or moral drift and disintegration.  Rather it relies on a belief that the foreign policy with which a country confronts the prospects of war is itself the product of many calculations: strategic, ideological, economic, cultural and psychological.  And it has placed much emphasis on the way people – collectively and individually – remember their past. That is at the root of this complexity, for the fact is that people do not remember the same past.  Out of that, comes the dissent, then the discord, as alternative truths collide and compete for the attention of reflective people who have yet to make up their mind.

 

Ultimately, when one takes away the conveniences of traitors and degenerates, this is the single greatest charge against the Republic’s leaders.  And their greatest defence.  The could not make up their minds about how best to deal with the German problem, the Depression, the challenges contained in modern military technology, the ideological; threats of communism and fascism, the economic and social menace of Anglo-Saxon currency and culture, the intellectual and moral spectre of another war.²⁶  

 

For Young, indecision and ambivalence dominated the leadership of the French Republic between the wars, and it was this that led to their downfall.  He sees this as excusable because indecisiveness and ambivalence dominate every person’s life, to differing degrees – the implication being that none of us would have done anything differently or better had we been in the place of the French leadership prior to the Second World War.  

 

The strength of Young’s conclusion is that it is possible to see this result in his analysis of the many different aspects of French society prior to the war, including its ideological, political, economic, military and social aspects.  That the French people and leadership were ambivalent is obvious.

 

The weakness of the conclusion is that it may confuse the concepts of “why something happened” with “what happened”.  In essence, if trying circumstances can lead to excusable indecisiveness then no one can ever be held to account – the circumstances, or the “what”, effectively undermine the possibility of understanding “the why” inherent in what leaders actually did, or failed to do, in response to those same trying circumstances.  And the fact is that the French leadership actually did react – while they were indecisive, they were not inactive.  Once any action was taken, or refused, then that action should be assessable.  Young’s conclusion leads to the idea that this is not the case, and that general indecisiveness can excuse the specific actions that were taken – including decisions not to act - as long as the circumstances were trying.  He is simply wrong.

 

The General Histories:  The history of France and its role in the origins of the war often appears in the form of introductory chapters in works about the Battle of France or the Second World War itself, or in general works about the history leading up the war.  It is not possible, nor even advisable, to attempt to cover all of these works – the introductions, for example, often add nothing to the issue.  There are some works, however, that look at the history of France‘s role in the origins of the war as integral to the larger work.  It is to these that we now turn our attention.

 

E. H. Carr’s work, International Relations Between The Two World Wars 1919- 1939, may serve as a starting point for this section.  This work takes the reader through the various happenings between the wars in a concise and straightforward manner.  Written in 1961, it is conservative in approach, avoiding explanations and largely sticking to the facts as the author sees them. 

 

For a work written 16 years after the war, it contains a number of unexpected virtues.  The primary one is the attempt by the author to incorporate a German perspective on the events, treating Germany as an interested party rather than the great evil it has largely been portrayed as since even before the start of the war.  For example, Carr notes as follows regarding the Franco-Soviet Pact of May 1935 and Germany’s reaction,

 

The Franco-Soviet pact of May 1935…had from the first been regarded by Germany as a military alliance directed exclusively against her and therefore incompatible with the Locarno Treaty – a view not shared by the French and British Governments.  Germany protested against it with increasing vehemence; and when, in early 1936, it was presented to the French Government for ratification, Hitler once more decided on a bold counter-stroke.²⁷

 

The counter-stroke was the re-occupation of the Rhineland.²⁸  The point being that Carr situates this aggressive act by Germany in the context of a larger picture which is informed by an evolving French foreign policy which could itself be seen as aggressive – at least from the German perspective.  Carr can only be successful in this by stepping back from the rhetoric and seeing Germany as a country in Europe with real interests, rather than the international pariah it is usually made out to be.  That Germany was the primary aggressor between the wars is clear from Carr’s work.  That it was possible to see Germany as only one of a number of aggressors is also obvious.

 

Carr was also unafraid to part from a chronological approach to his work, and instead he concentrates on issues and areas of the world on a thematic basis, as the narrative warrants.  The result is a superior piece of work that gives the reader a deeper sense of the events of these years than would have been possible with a purely chronological approach.  The draw-back is that facts alone are covered – Carr doesn’t even provide a conclusion.  Given that facts are the foundation on which conclusions are based, this work, in that it illustrates the facts in a superior fashion, is still a serious contribution to the historiography of the area - so much so that one reaches the end of the work actually disappointed that Carr did not take the next step and move from a recitation of the facts to plausible explanations.  That being said, leaving your reader wanting more is always a good approach, and in this Carr succeeded admirably.

 

From one work heavy on facts to another loaded with opinion, we may next consider Anthony P. Adamthwaite’s The Making of the Second World War.  If Carr’s work was essentially a discussion of what happened, Adamthwaite’s is an entire essay on why the war was not averted.  His thesis is as follows:

Though the settlement that ended the First World War was a parched-up peace it was not fore-doomed to failure.  A solid Anglo-French alliance might have contained Germany.  The reasons for the rapid breakdown of the European security system erected in 1919 are to be found in the explosive mixture of power politics and ideology that propelled Germany, in the general detestation of war and in the appreciation of economic, political and military weaknesses that weighed down western statesmen.  Essentially it was a failure to envisage alternative political and military strategies.²⁹

 

In reading Adamthwaite’s thesis one is reminded of Young’s work noted in the section above and his conclusions regarding the indecisiveness of the French leadership.  Adamthwaite’s appends over 100 pages of original source materials to his work – longer than the essay itself - which are the basis of his argument, and which serve to strongly support many of his contentions as contained in the work.  One problem with Adamthwaite’s work, however, is the very fact that it is geared to making a point, rather than toward discovering anything like an objective truth – in short, the reader is not left to reach their own conclusion, but is gently guided by the author toward the author’s conclusions.  This skews his analysis.

 

Consider, for example, how Adamthwaite describes the German occupation of the Rhineland in 1936,

 

While Britain and France were distracted by the Abyssinian war Hitler made his first major move against the territorial order.  On 7 March 1936, alleging a contradiction between the Franco-Soviet pact and the Treaty of Locarno, he sent a force of 22,000 men into the demilitarized Rhineland, violating the Versailles and Locarno treaties.³⁰

 

This may be contrasted with the quote from Carr above which covers the same issue.  It is worth noting that in Adamthwaite’s version, it is not so much Germany that invades, but Hitler – the word “Germany” does not even appear, therefore he personalizes the action.  Also, the element of a “distraction” is added, obviously to heighten the sense of the sinister to the situation.  Finally, the German violation of Locarno is noted, while the German complaint that the separate pact between France and the USSR is itself a violation of Locarno is called an “allegation” with the implication that it is fraudulent.

 

Adamthwaite’s thesis needs Germany to be the aggressor in order to show how the Allied nations failed to “envisage alternative political and military strategies” to Germany’s aggression, as noted above.  This precludes Adamthwaite from treating Germany as a nation with normal interests, and the result is a useful, but flawed analysis.

 

Williamson Murray’s work The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938-1939 - The Path to Ruin represents one of the standard approaches to history.  As the title suggests, it is a balance of power analysis, anchored in myriad facts and figures about production of war material, military preparedness, economic production and the like.³¹ 

Williamson’s work is useful. Unlike Young’s book reviewed above, Williamson has the following to say regarding ambivalence and decision-making,

 

Only by looking at patterns and by comparing one organization with another can historians assess with some degree of accuracy the performance of individuals or of bureaucrats.  Thus, the Chamberlain government’s performance falls not on a single incident like Munich but rather on its consistent inability through to its fall in May 1940 either to judge or to execute any effective strategic response to the German threat.  Similarly, only when compared to the tactical and operational developments in Germany, does the French army’s competence in the late 1930’s appear most unsatisfactory.³²

 

Rather than just rely on facts and figures, Williamson also looks at the history of the events from 1936 to 1939, he sees the same ambivalence as Young, but chooses to find blame rather than excuse.  He states that, “The responsibility of Chamberlain, Halifax, Hoare, Daladier, and Bonnet for the disaster of 1940 was clear almost from the start of the Second World War. But military planners and leaders of Great Britain and France, the Chatfields, the Slessors, the Newalls, the Gorts, the Gamelins, and the Weygands bear an equal share of responsibility.”³³ 

 

Williamson’s argument extends from the general point that the Fall of France was largely a military problem, and he goes beyond this to the time before May 1940 where he finds blame as well.  He is more convincing than Young, largely because he actually offers an explanation based in the idea that to leadership attach responsibilities.  Williamson’s weakness is in assigning blame equally to all actors, and in limiting his analysis to one based only in the relative balance of power.  This focus prevents him from exploring many of the aspects that Young covered, but never tied together.  For Williamson this was about leaders and their failings, based on the raw calculation of interests.  This is one substantial part of the answer, but only one part.

 

Maurice Agulhon’s work, The French Republic 1987 – 1992, contains a lengthy chapter on France in the interwar period entitled “Confronting ‘Fascism’, 1932 – 1940”.  The first thing of note is that the author is actually French - the first Frenchman to have his work reviewed in this paper.  His is a general political history, but even so it is uniquely French, in that his discussion of the Fall of France ends with the emergence of Gaullism right at the end of the chapter.  The relation of the two in a chapter chronicling the defeat of France in June 1940 is illuminating.

 

Agulhon sees the debacle of 1940 as merely part of a greater and much longer struggle between France and Germany in Europe.³⁴  In this sense, he sees the Battle of France much as Horne and Shirer see it – part of a decades-long struggle with pauses, treaties, defeats and victories along the way to the final defeat of Germany in 1945. 

 

Agulhon also sees in the defeat of 1940 the emergence of a philosophy of national legitimacy as opposed to a formal legality, in short, de Gaulle versus Vichy.  He noted that it was Vichy that was the legally-constituted government of France – de Gaulle was, in his opinion, the rebel who chose to continue the war.³⁵  This is crucial to Agulhon’s understanding of the defeat itself, and of the reason for it.  Why is this so?

 

Simply put, if one chooses to see the Fall of France as a temporary setback in a decades-long struggle, then de Gaulle becomes the key to one’s interpretation events, because it is his continuation of the war that itself becomes the manifestation of this continuing struggle after the defeat in June 1940.  In essence, France did not so much lose, as continue the battle in another way following a rather gigantic setback.  What of that setback? 

 

For Agulhon, the rationale for the defeat comes not from incompetence on the Left, or machinations on the Right, or even to a failure on the part of the military leadership, but it all comes down to 12 words, “France was still drained by the victory so dearly bought in 1918.”³⁶  To say that this is unsatisfying is an understatement.  It is worth mentioning that Agulhon’s work is part of a recent five-part history of France, from the Middle Ages to the present.  That the reason for the second-most traumatic experience that France went through in the last century is reduced to 12 words should speak volumes for the willingness of Frenchmen to face the defeat itself, even today. 

 

When Horne sees the Battle of France as part of a larger decades-long struggle, he does this as part of an historical construct born of years of analysis and consideration.  When Agulhon does it, however, it is as part of a national amnesia – an amnesia which remembers the politics of the 1930’s, and la resistance after 1940, but which has yet to completely confront its national humiliation, or to remember the very substantial honour that was apparent in May and June of 1940, regardless of the result.  The 120,000 Frenchmen who died for Liberty, and their country, during those terrible six weeks deserve better. 

 

The “Conspiracy Theories”:  The term “conspiracy theories” needs qualification.  What is meant here is not “conspiracy theories” as commonly understood today – the often groundless “theories” regarding disastrous world events that exist in abundance, and which reflect a society in which every opinion is deemed valuable regardless of its actual worth, with the entire edifice coasting on the crest of an often irresponsible, arrogantly self-satisfying, and ultimately debilitating cynicism. (Not to be confused with those who have spent 35 years researching their topic before commenting.)  What is meant here are the various histories of the interwar period and the Battle of France, written shortly after the Fall of France itself which try to explain the disaster, usually by assigning blame to one faction or another.  Their greatest virtue consists in the fact that they were written by people who either participated in or at least observed events, first-hand.

 

The most important work in this genre is the work of Marc Bloch written in the year after the battle, but not published until after the war.  If Bloch’s work was surprisingly even-handed in seeking to blame essentially everyone, the works of many other people were not.  In essence, the Right blamed the Left, the Left blamed the Right, and virtually everyone who was actually in power at the time tried to avoid any blame whatsoever.  Bloch’s work will be covered last so that it may be contrasted against the other less-worthy explanations and accusations.

 

Immediately after the establishment of Vichy, the official reason for the debacle was given as the left-leaning regime that dominated France immediately prior top the war – in short, the democratic Republic itself was to blame, and had to be replaced.  Laval and Petain both contributed to this by way of speeches made upon the establishment of the Vichy regime. 

 

Laval’s explanation was as follows, “France was overly fat and happy.  She used and abused her freedoms.  And it is precisely because there was an excess of freedom in all fields of endeavor that we find ourselves in the present straits.”³⁷ 

 

Laval then went on to describe how the regime that permitted these freedoms had to be replaced, stating as follows, “We must break with the past.  It was full of illusions…We believed in individual freedom, in the independence of man.  It was but an anticipation of the future which was beyond our grasp.  We must have a new faith based on the values…France abandoned herself.  It must now begin anew.”³⁸ 

 

Petain stated as follows regarding the defeat,

 

This defeat was caused by many factors, not all of which were of a technical nature.  In truth, the disaster was simply the reflection, on a military plane, of the weaknesses and defects of the former regime.…Hindered by…domestic political considerations, the regime was, for the most part, incapable of formulating and implementing a foreign policy worthy of France…This war was all but lost in advance.”³⁹ 

 

Note that by “technical in nature” he is absolving the professional military of responsibility. 

 

Regarding the need for a “regime change”, Petain also stated that, “Today, we must rebuild France on a heap of ruins…A new order is an absolute necessity for France.”⁴⁰  It is worth noting that Petain never did get around to writing a new constitution for France – apparently reactionaries and not very good revolutionaries.

 

Charles Maurras, who was the leader of the Action Français, an ultra-nationalist, neo-monarchist, anti-Semitic movement implacably opposed to the Third Republic and to democracy itself, spoke more eloquently for the position of the Right than either Laval or Petain.  In commenting on what he saw as France’s march to war at his trial following the Allied victory in 1945, Maurras stated that, “It was in the fateful year of 1935, even as we were giving up the Saar, that the French democratic parties became the proponents of an offensive war.”⁴¹  Maurras continued and noted that that by permitting the reoccupation of the Rhineland, the democratic politicians had permitted the destruction of France’s strategic position gained at such great price during the First World War, and only then actively sought war with Germany.⁴² 

 

Further, Maurras noted the role of elections, and the fact that the March 1936 German re-occupation of the Rhineland was not stopped by France entirely owing to the fact that national elections were pending. ⁴³  Finally, he noted that France’s military position was weakened between 1924 and 1932; the result being that the nation could not match what he saw as the war-mongering of the democrats who later led France into a disastrous war.⁴⁴   It is worth noting that Maurras was the only author reviewed for the purposes of the historiography to come out and state the essence of the thesis of the second part of the paper, which is that the French Republic actively sought to bring on the war with Germany.

 

What do we make of these men?  The words of Laval and Petain must be read in light of the fact that Vichy actually was a popular regime in the months and even years that followed its establishment in July of 1940 – there was some truth in the assertion that the people had enough of the machinations of democracy, a political philosophy which appeared to be in deep retreat all over the world in the years leading up to 1940. 

 

There is also much in Maurras that seems reasonable enough.  That he was a French nationalist is beyond doubt.  He was also a fascist vigorously opposed to democracy.  How he would resolve the conflict between his nationalism on the one hand, and his fascism on the other, in the face of an opportunity through military defeat by Germany to replace the Republic with a fascist regime, is a question every right-wing politician in France faced in July of 1940.  Maurras resolved this in favour of defeat and fascism, opposing both Gaullism and the Resistance during the years of Vichy.⁴⁵  Because of this, both his opposition to the war, and his condemnation of the democratic leadership, must be considered in the context of his need to avoid any association with the creation of the opportunity to replace the Republic - with the defeat itself - of which he and others on the Right availed themselves by establishing Vichy in July 1940.  Had he admitted otherwise; in short, had he admitted that he supported France losing the war to fascist Germany so as to permit such a regime to be established in his own country, he would, of course, have been shot – or guillotined.    

 

Edouard Daladier was the Minister of War in the early 1930’s under Leon Blum, and Premier of France from April of 1938 to March of 1940.  As such, he represented France at Munich, and was Premier at the time that France declared war on Germany and entered World War Two.  Naturally, he became a prime target for the blame that followed the eventual defeat, even being tried at Riom by the Vichy regime in 1941.

 

After the war, Daladier had an opportunity to state his case regarding the defeat.  His primary purpose appears to have been to “set the record straight” regarding how France came to be at war with Germany.  In particular he stated that, “Do not believe, as was charged during the years of occupation, that the French Government went to war recklessly.”⁴⁶ From there he gave an in-depth recounting of the attempts by France to avoid war.  He stated that, “For eight days, from August 23 to September 3, the Government left no stone unturned in a last attempt to save the peace….we did everything in our power to prevent the outbreak of hostilities, because we were under no illusions as to the nature and meaning of modern war.”⁴⁷  His testimony recounts specific French attempts to resolve the dispute over Danzig and the “Polish Corridor”, which constituted the last territorial demand by Germany before the war actually started.⁴⁸

 

One may ask why Daladier felt compelled to give this particular testimony.  His testimony was, in fact, a response to the accusations of men like Maurras.  The implication of this should be clear – there may have been some truth to the accusations of the Right which were to the effect that the democratic parties of the Third Republic sought war against Germany, and then went to war unprepared.  Note that regarding why he thought he had to outline the last efforts to maintain the peace, Daladier stated that, “But why give you a detailed account of these last-ditch efforts?  I simply would like to dispel the widespread belief that the French Government plunged blindly into war.”⁴⁹ 

 

Later, when assessing the perceived abilities of the French military, Daladier stated that,

 

For my part, I believed then as I do now, and I shall try to share this conviction, that France was initially capable of resisting, if not invading and defeating Germany…I did not for a moment envision the possibility of a military collapse.  In my mind, this collapse was due less to deficiencies of a technical or material order, than to faulty military doctrines, and even more to the difference between the doctrines of the two armies, and to the tremendous strategic surprise which was sprung at the time.⁵⁰    

 

Daladier’s opinion regarding the abilities of the French military after the war was consistent with the opinion that he held before the war.  In a speech to the Chamber of Deputies on May 11, 1939 he stated that,

 

We know that we have to defend our Country, our liberties, our beliefs, and our ideal of human dignity.  If a just and equitable Peace is wanted, we are ready for discussion.  But if Peace is violated, the weight of our arms will be felt.  If, between Peace and war, some have the hope of wearing us out, let them know that we shall hold the fort as long as it is necessary. Neither force nor wile has any power against France.⁵¹ 

 

In his speeches before the war Daladier also made much of the need to prepare France for war, and of the necessity of an alliance with Britain.  This will be touched on in the second part of the paper.  Suffice it to say that Daladier considered France to be ready for war in 1939.

 

Paul Reynaud replaced Daladier as premier in March of 1940.  He was much more strident when it came to assigning blame for the debacle, stating that, “In the debate over the responsibilities for the defeat, the rightful place for the men of Vichy is at the bench of the accused.”⁵²  Having stated this, he later made the comment that, “The truth is that we were defeated because, during the interwar period, both the succeeding Governments and the Parliament failed to fulfill their functions.”⁵³  In this, he appears to side with the Right which, as we have seen, blamed the Republic for the defeat.  What did he mean by this?

 

First and foremost, Reynaud asserted that the politicians did not question the military plans of the military leadership, which included Petain, closely enough. This combined with intellectual rigidity on the part of the military, prevented the military from re-modeling itself. ⁵⁴     

 

Reynaud also maintained that Parliament and the government followed economic, diplomatic and military policies that were incoherent.  Examples include voting a reduction in the military when Hitler came to power; the French government declaring in 1934 that France would rely on France alone for its defence, when this was clearly unreasonable; the refusal to devalue the franc in the face of the depression; and the building of a military that could not come to the defence of Poland or Czechoslovakia in spite of alliances assuring these countries that France would do just that.⁵⁵  In essence, Reynaud blamed the specific French governments and Parliament for not doing their jobs.  This must be contrasted with the Right which saw not problems with personalities, but with the republican-democratic system as a whole.

 

And so, who was responsible in Reynaud’s mind?  Regardless of his statements regarding the government and Parliament, it must be emphasized that Reynaud saw fault for the fall of France primarily in the military leadership which he thought had surrendered France to the Germans following the battle.  As Premier, he had intended to leave France to carry on the war from the Empire.  He was thwarted in this by Weygand, of whom he wrote, “There we have it!  In these tragic days, Weygand, obsessed by a fear of domestic chaos, discarded any idea of liberating France, the only consideration which was obsessing me.”⁵⁶  

 

For Reynaud then there was clear fault, and it was clearly on the part of the military, and their right-wing cohorts.  He is not alone in this, as his was an opinion also shared by both Andre Simone in his work J’Accuse! - The Men Who Betrayed France, and Jacques Martiain in his work France My Country – Through the Disaster.

 

The title of Simone’s work, harkening back to the days of Dreyfus and therefore showing some similarity to the work of Shirer, underscores his opinion as to the source of the debacle.  He stated that, “France was not beaten by Hitler.  It was destroyed from within by a Fifth Column with the most powerful connections in the Government, big business, the State administration and the Army.”⁵⁷  Simone was a journalist, and as a result J’Accuse! is immensely readable.  It is also clearly a work of propaganda, packed with unprovable accusations and obviously designed to respond to the propaganda of Vichy.  Regardless of this, to the extent that it is propaganda, it is stunningly effective, leaving the reader wondering what could possibly be said in response.  

 

Maritain’s work is similarly effective, but for a different reason.  In France My Country, Maritain, who was a French Catholic philosopher, tries to paint a picture of his country in defeat.  If Simone’s work is convincing, Maritain’s is thoughtful.  He is most effective when dissembling various accusations made by the Right concerning the moral decay of France as a reason for the defeat.  He notes that,

 

But it is utterly irrational to see in the sins of the French the direct and decisive reason for that defeat when the sins of their conquerors cry to heaven....

 

Whatever be the shortcomings that France may have to blame herself for, she has remained faithful to the values of the spirit, to the sense of what is human, true an free, to the quality of generous humility in everyday life…The French people was politically demoralized; it was not morally demoralized.⁵⁸ (Emphasis by Maritain)

 

To those who pointed to the immorality of France as the reason for her fall – in other words, Laval and Vichy – pointing out the sins of Nazi Germany, even as they were understood in 1940, is a complete retort.  Reading Maritain is a reminder of the essential morality and Human decency that informs democracy – a morality and sense of decency too often forgotten in a world where relativism seemingly rules, but which is immediately familiar to anyone living in a long-standing liberal democracy, the moment that it is honestly encountered.

 

This brings us to Marc Bloch. His work, Strange Defeat is often considered the starting point for a discussion of the reasons for France’s defeat.  It is the end-point of this historiography for reasons which shall be apparent below.  It was written in the year after the defeat, and published in 1946.  Bloch himself was killed in 1944 as part of the Resistance. 

 

In his opinion, France’s defeat could be blamed, first and foremost, on the French High Command.  He stated that,

 

What drove out armies to disaster was the cumulative effect of a great number of different mistakes.  One glaring characteristic is, however, common to all of them.  Our leaders, or those who acted for them, were incapable of thinking in terms of a new war.  In other words, the German triumph was essentially, a triumph of intellect – and it is that which makes it so particularly serious.⁵⁹ (Emphasis by Bloch)

 

Bloch continues on and states that, “In no nation is any professional group ever entirely responsible for its own actions.”⁶⁰   In short, while he blamed the military leadership, he then went on to assess why the military leadership was so incompetent – what in French society produced such dotards?  In this vein he states that, “The very nature of my inquiry makes it necessary that the evidence of the soldier be balanced and completed by the self-examination of the Frenchman.”⁶¹

 

In his examination, Bloch first and foremost blamed every Frenchman.  He stated that, “Confronted by the nation’s peril and by the duties that it lays on every citizen, all adults are equal, and only a curiously warped mind would claim for any of them the privilege of immunity.”⁶²  He later isolated various sections of the population from blame; from the mayors who left their towns open to the enemy and officials who left their posts without orders, of whom he wrote, “Whatever the reasons, there can be no doubt that our governors…did lack something of that ruthless heroism which becomes so necessary when the country is in danger.”⁶³  He went on and indicted the trade unionists and workers who shirked their duties; the upper middle class and the great industrialists; the intellectual classes; the civil servants; and French Communists.⁶⁴

 

In discussing the Republican regime Bloch noted that, “I have only to look about me to feel convinced that the parliamentary system has too often favoured intrigue at the cost of intelligence and true loyalty…It was entirely owing to our ministers and assemblies that we were so ill prepared for war.”⁶⁵  In this he pointed out, much as had Reynaud, the failure of the government to wrest control over military matters from the military technicians.  He did not go to extremes, however, and noted that much of the blame pointed at the pre-war regime is pure fantasy.⁶⁶

 

The public institutions of France, namely the Ecole des Sciences Politiques, the Treasury, the Council of State, the Public Audit Office, and the Institute of France were all noted by Bloch as worthy of blame as being rent with, “…bureaucratic tendencies, routine mentality, and professionals arrogance.”⁶⁷ 

 

He saved particular wrath for the bourgeoisie – the middle classes which were none too happy in the France of the Popular Front, who Bloch accused of giving up on France.  He specifically stated that, “As a result of attacking the regime, these same bourgeois proceeded, naturally, to condemn the nation which had produced it.  Driven to despair of their own future, they ended by despairing of their country.”⁶⁸  With this, he included the press, and in particular, the press controlled by the middle classes.⁶⁹

 

This complete indictment of France as a whole could have stood on its own.  However, Bloch’s wide-ranging condemnation of France may have been for naught but for the greatest strength in Bloch’s work.  Marc Bloch was an historian and teacher, and as such, in the end, he steped outside of his role as critique, and into the role of accused; he accepted personal blame for the debacle.  He notes that, “There is no getting away from the fact that we, the teachers, were largely to blame for this state of affairs.”⁷⁰  If he started by pointing out the intellectual deficiencies on the part of the French High Command, he ended by tying this state of affairs to deficiencies in terms of their education – which he sees as having been the responsibility of their teachers.  In short, he saw the debacle, and declares “I also am to blame for this.” 

 

Bloch is the last author covered here as he stands apart from, and in many respects above, the others who analyzed the reasons for France’s defeat in 1940.  He was, in the end, the only one with the moral fortitude to accept his full responsibilities as a citizen, recognizing that democracy implies both rights and responsibilities.  His story also stands as a lesson.  Too often men like this have populated military cemeteries, while those less-worthy – cowards and lesser sorts, not worthy of their pretended convictions – have gone on to fame, fortune, and power.   

 

Conclusion:  The historiography surrounding France and the origins of World War Two looks heavily at the question of the French defeat in the Battle of France, and the origins of this defeat  in the years before.  This defeat is variously seen as inevitable, or avoidable, and it has been blamed on virtually every active element in French society at the time.  While the inevitability of the defeat itself has been heavily debated, the inevitability of the war has been debated much less.  More particularly, the role that France may have played in the coming of the war has been noticed almost not at all.  While not ultimately on point, for the purposes of the next part of this paper which will explore this issue, the historiography reveals certain trends and themes that will prove useful.  These are as follows.

 

First and foremost, as was noted in Horne, Shirer, and Agulhon, it is possible to see this entire episode as part of a 70-year confrontation between France and Germany for mastery of Europe.  While the interwar period and battle can be looked at in isolation, if the question relates to France’s possible march to war, it is appropriate to situate this within what would have been the common memory of those who were responsible at the time.  In fact, some who were involved in the final demise of the Third Republic were actually active in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, including, especially, Petain.  Given the connections between that war and the First World War, and then the First World War’s connection with the Second World War, it seems appropriate to take the larger view here.  As a result, the analysis which follows will look at France’s possible march to war as part of a continuing confrontation that lasted 70 years.

 

Secondly, as noted in Young, Jackson, Shirer, Murray, and Bloch, it is impossible to ignore the internal workings of France between the wars in assessing whether or not there was a march afoot.  With this must be an assessment of the population of the country, and its attitudes toward war – attitudes which may have had to have been molded to the purpose if going to war was the real goal.  Also, this part of the analysis should obviously include looking at and considering military preparations, and the respective balance of power, seeing as these are the product of military recommendations, and therefore of political decision-making.

 

Finally, various authors touched on the interwar diplomacy, in particular Carr and Adamthwaite.  It is suggested that it is here that the essence of a march to war would be most clearly revealed, as it is through diplomacy that France would seek to continue its 70-year struggle with Germany.

 

The Argument – France’s March to War

 

Introduction:  Was France marching to war in the years between The Treaty of Versailles and the start of the Second World War?  What follows is an analysis which will attempt to answer this question in the affirmative.  Note that this may not, in the fullness of time, prove to have been the correct question to ask, but it is, nonetheless, the one which will be answered here.  Also, given the novelty of this approach, the various short-comings in the analysis and gaps in the historical record will be pointed-out toward the end of the argument. 

 

Because of the nature of the question, there needs to be a caveat.  It is possible to see a French march to war as excusing France’s opponents – in short, to see Nazi Germany as a victim of French aggression should this thesis prove to be correct, or even persuasive.  In response, note that the fact of a French march to war would not mean that there was no German march directed to the same end.  Also, it should be noted that if France was actually marching to war prior to September 1939, and especially after 1933, the author is of the opinion that this would have been the right thing to do, and that the French should have taken action well before 1939. 

 

Setting the Stage – The Policy of Containment:  The Third Republic was born at Sedan, and it died there 70 years later.  In between, there was the greatest war the world had ever seen, and Versailles. 

 

The Treaty of Versailles represented an attempt by France to keep Germany to heel.  This French resolve was best exhibited by Clemenceau, the French Premier who negotiated on behalf of France.  In her recent work, Paris, 1919 – Six Months That Changed The World, Margaret MacMillan describes Clemenceau’s approach as follows,

 

It may be only a legend that Clemenceau asked to be buried upright, facing Germany.  It was certainly true that he had been on guard against France’s great neighbor for most of his life.  He was only twenty-eight when the Franco-Prussian War started, and he was part of the group of young left-wing republicans who fought on in Paris after the French armies were defeated…As a newly-elected deputy, he voted against the peace terms with Germany.  As a journalist, writer, politician and finally prime minister, he sounded the same warning: Germany was a menace to France.⁷¹

 

More than this, MacMillan stated regarding Clemenceau, that, “He did not actively seek war after 1871; he simply accepted it as inevitable.”⁷²  And finally, regarding the possibly of winning a war against Germany, she noted that, “To have a chance, Clemenceau had always recognized, France needed allies.”⁷³

 

This then, being the opinion of the French leadership at the time, should fairly represent the attitude of France at Versailles.  In short, Germany, France’s historic enemy and constant threat, had to be managed into the future.  And what of this future?  For the French, it is reasonable to assume: 1) that war with Germany was considered to be a constant possibility; and that 2) winning a war against Germany required the support of allies. 

 

On this point, and the impact of Versailles, consider Horne who wrote that after the Treaty had been concluded,

 

…there was the mortal illusion (although, certainly, Foch for one did not share it) that vanquished, ruined, truncated, revolution-torn Germany could never again be a military menace.  But had Frenchmen forgotten already how the harsh settlement imposed by Prussia in 1871, with its territorial amputations, had kept alight France’s own fire of revenge for the best part for a century?...Versailles had simply transferred the burden to Germany…⁷⁴  

 

What then did Versailles mean for Germany and how was it an attempt by France to keep Germany at bay?

 

The last great European peace conference prior to Versailles was that of the Congress of Vienna in 1815, into which France was invited to participate as a full partner by 1818.⁷⁵  In the years which followed, Great Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia co-operated within the Quadruple Alliance expressly for the purpose of keeping France restrained.⁷⁶  The important point is that emphasis was not placed on an attempt by the other Great Powers to limit France in and of itself, coupled with a refusal to consider France as a full participant and the major power that she was.  Rather, emphasis was placed on mutual alliances designed to restrain her.  It is worth considering that there was no other general European war involving all of the great nations of Europe for about 100 years after this.

 

At Versailles, the Allies took the opposite approach.  Rather than permit German re-entry into the realm of Great Powers as a full partner and restrained by an alliance designed to keep her in check, the Allies resolved on a strategy of emasculation.  The terms of the Treaty of Versailles, as applied to Germany, were as follows:

 

·       Germany had to surrender about 13% of its pre-war territory, and all of its colonies;

·       The “Polish Corridor” was created, separating East Prussia from Germany itself;

·       Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France;

·       The German army was restricted to 100,000 men;

·       Germany’s navy was limited to 6 cruisers, and no vessels of more than 10,000 tons;

·       Germany was forbidden to possess aircraft, submarines, tanks, or heavy artillery, and its general staff was dissolved;

·       There was to be an immediate payment of $5 billion in cash, or in kind, and $7 billion in German assets overseas was seized;

·       Britain received much of the German merchant fleet;

·       Germany’s main rivers were internationalized;

·       Germany was eventually to pay $40 billion in reparations ($323 billion in 1994 dollars); and

·       Germany formally accepted moral responsibility for the war via the “war guilt” clause of the treaty.⁷⁷

 

In commenting on this “peace” E.H. Carr noted that,

 

…it was, in a phrase made familiar by German propaganda, a “dictated peace”.  It was imposed by the victors on the vanquished, not negotiated by a process of give-and-take between them.  Nearly every treaty which brings war to an end is, in one sense, a dictated peace; for a defeated Power seldom accepts willingly the consequences of its defeat.  But in the Treaty of Versailles the element of dictation was more apparent than in any previous peace treaty of modern times.⁷⁸

 

The most galling part of the treaty from the German perspective was the war guilt clause, which Germany later called the “war guilt lie.”⁷⁹  This clause, so obviously unfair in saddling Germany with all blame for the war, started to be questioned in the 1920’s – particularly in Britain - with this effectively starting the process by which willingness to enforce the Treaty started to dissolve.⁸⁰

 

This was unfortunate for France.  She had staked everything on an aggressive treaty, which included the League of Nations system of collective security, but which was also designed to protect the spoils that France had won through a successful war – including, most importantly, her security. 

 

Regarding her security needs, France was granted a fifteen-year military occupation of the Rhineland in Germany through the Treaty, which area was also to be permanently disarmed, and both Great Britain and the United States also undertook to come to the assistance of France in the event of unprovoked aggression, by Germany.⁸¹  These concessions were granted in exchange for a refusal to give France the Rhineland outright.⁸²  As negotiated, this likely would have given France the security she craved.

 

It was not to be.  When the United States refused to ratify Versailles, the British undertaking similarly lapsed.⁸³  With this, France’s hopes for enforcing this treaty, and her hopes for preventing another war with Germany - which must have been seen as inevitable by her leadership, versed as they were in the previous 50 years of antagonism - were largely dashed.  The next decade saw France following a contradictory policy of self-help, alliances within Europe, and treaties to enhance collective security, that were all aimed at obtaining for France the type of security that only an alliance with the United States or Britain could have brought.  France’s efforts in this regard are reviewed in the next section.

 

In conclusion, we may reflect on the usefulness of this “emasculation approach” by considering the words of Henry Kissinger who once wrote that, “A punitive peace mortgages the international order because it saddles the victors drained by their wartime exertions, with the task of holding down a country determined to undermine the settlement.”⁸⁴  The emasculation, to be permanent, required that France be supported by powerful allies who understood with France the need to keep Germany subdued.  The tragedy for France was that no such allies existed, with the necessary resolve, until well after her defeat by Germany in 1940.

 

What of the march to war?  At Versailles, France tried to set up the conditions by which her victory in the First World War would be preserved.  In short, she tried to preserve the results of a successful march to war.  The approach followed was one of an extremely aggressive peace treaty, which reflected the general understanding of the French leadership, both civilian and military, that France was involved in a continuing confrontation with her Northern neighbor – a confrontation for which France had only momentarily gained the upper hand. 

 

If this perspective is correct, it is hard not to envision, if not a march to war right after Versailles – that would not have been necessary given the recent victory in World War One – then at least a resolve on the part of the French leadership equal to the aggression of a war, coupled with an understanding that, without Britain and The United States as fellow enforcers, war in the form of “preventative measures” would have to be contemplated. 

 

Certainly, Versailles was less a “peace” than an armistice, as was noted by Marshal Foch – the Supreme Allied Commander at the end of the war - upon learning that France would not be ceded the Rhineland.⁸⁵  On the completion of the Treaty, and only after having been rebuffed one last time in his pleas to permit France the security of this area of Germany, Foch stated that, “The next time, remember, the Germans will make no mistake.  They will break through into Northern France and seize the Channel ports as a base of operations against England.”⁸⁶  It is suggested here that it is inconceivable that this very thought was not on the minds of the French leadership throughout the period from Versailles in 1919, to Sedan in 1939.  Their point of reference was their history, and the history that they knew always pointed to the possibility of war with Germany.

 

The Quest for Security - Invasion and Alliances:  Without British and American allies, France decided to attempt to both enforce the peace essentially by herself – at least for a time, and to find other allies.  As Carr put it in describing the French position,

 

When it became clear, about the beginning of 1920, that the Anglo-American guarantee against unprovoked aggression would not come into force, France was left without any treaty protection against Germany other than that contained in the Covenant of the League of Nations.  France decided from the first that this was insufficient.⁸⁷

 

In terms of new allies, in 1920 France concluded a military alliance with Belgium which lasted until Belgium chose neutrality in 1936.⁸⁸  In February, 1921, France and Poland signed a treaty of alliance, which included a secret military protocol.⁸⁹  In January 1924, France and Czechoslovakia concluded an alliance in which each promised to support the other in case of unprovoked attacks.⁹⁰  These French-Polish and French-Czechoslovakian treaties were updated by way of the Locarno Treaties of October 1925.⁹¹ Even after Locarno, which is analyzed below, France continued to strengthen her alliance system, strengthening her political ties to Romania in June 1926, and concluding a Treaty of Friendship with Yugoslavia in June 1926.⁹² 

 

By 1926 then, France had concluded treaties of varying sorts with many of the small to middle-sized nations of Europe, and three of the countries bordering Germany.  It is worth noting that Britain did actually offer guarantees to France against Germany similar to what was in Versailles, in January 1922, but was rebuffed by the French as there was no guarantee of the specifics of the British military aid in case of war.⁹³ 

 

It should be pointed out here that from point of view of a possible march to war, alliances, while ostensibly defensive in nature, are often anything but.  From the perspective of France these may have seemed defensive, especially given that she was seeking to defend her gains from the First World War.  From Germany’s perspective, these must have seemed suffocating, particularly when coupled with her enforced reduction in armaments which left her vulnerable to all of her neighbors. 

 

Besides alliances, France sought security in terms of her resolve to enforce Versailles virtually on her own if need be.  More specifically, by late 1922 Germany had rebuked the payment of reparations in kind to France in accordance with Versailles.  The missed payments were minor, but France resolved on a strategy of invasion and forced payments nonetheless.⁹⁴  She voted with Belgium on the Reparations Commission to find Germany in “voluntary default” of her obligations, and based on the enforcement Articles of Versailles and over the objections of Britain, both France and Belgium occupied the Rhur – the German industrial heartland, in order to force payment in January 1923.⁹⁵

 

The results of this invasion, for that is what it was, were disastrous for France.  The German response was economic warfare, including the closing of all operations in the occupied area, to which the French responded with a boycott, refusing to permit materials in or out of the occupied zone.  In the end, France never recovered even the costs of the occupation, while the German exchequer went bankrupt and with it the German middle class, owing to the inflation which ensued.⁹⁶ 

 

Worse than this, however, was the effect on opinion in Britain and America.  Because of this occupation, opinion in Britain started to shift against France, and in favour of Germany.  Adamthwaite wrote that, “But the modest financial gains of the Rhur action were greatly outweighed by the blow to France’s international standing.  Anglo-American goodwill was forfeited and British suspicions that France wanted to keep Germany down indefinitely were confirmed.”⁹⁷  Of course, if the central thesis outlined in the paper thus far is correct, it actually was the aim of France to keep Germany down – that was surely the point of Versailles.  The tragedy of the Rhur invasion then was the fact that it meant that the ally that France most clearly craved in its efforts to keep Germany at bay, namely Great Britain, would be largely sympathetic to German efforts to reverse Versailles for another decade or more.

 

Out of the Rhur invasion came the Dawes Plan which was a reparations schedule which ensured that there would be no more “self-help” by France for at least five years.⁹⁸  It is worth noting that on May 11, 1924, the French government changed hands, from the right-wing government of Poincare, to the left-wing Radical government of Herriot.⁹⁹  Carr sees this as a turning point as it signaled the rejection of the policy of “self-help” engaged in by Poincare, owing to the threat that it would have brought about an “open breach” with Britain.¹⁰⁰  The next section starts with the Locarno Treaties, and the inherent contradictions to be found in France, and the other nations, pursuing any such alliances while at the same time a part of the collective security system of the Covenant of the League of Nations.

 

Before moving on, it is worthwhile returning to the question of whether or not France was engaged in a march to war between 1919 and 1939.  We have seen that it was her purpose to hold onto the spoils of her successful march to war from 1914 to 1918, most specifically through Versailles.  In light of this, it is suggested that it is virtually impossible to see the Rhur occupation as anything less than the continuation of this aggression, albeit against an enemy that could no longer take military action in response to the French invasion.  The issue of rights is beside the main point – in 1923, France actually marched to war, unless invasions and year-long military occupations are peaceful. 

 

Contradictions – The Locarno Treaties and The League:  We have seen that after the Americans and British refused to abide by their Versailles undertakings, the French actively sought out alliances with which to restrain Germany.  France was a part of the League of Nations system at the time however, and in terms of her security she should have been able to rely on the collective security provisions of the League Covenant for protection, like any other nation.

 

The problem was that France, and one gathers the other nations in Europe as well, did not consider the Covenant as a sufficient guarantee of their security.  By 1925 the major powers therefore resolved on a series of mutual treaties to preserve the peace, which became the Locarno Treaties.

 

The Locarno Treaties of 1925 were a series of seven treaties between Germany, France, Britain, Italy, and Belgium.  They guaranteed to Western border of Germany with Belgium and France, leaving the German Eastern border to be resolved through arbitration, although it is worthy of note that Britain refused to guarantee even this provision as it related to Eastern frontiers.  Locarno pledged the nations to arbitration to settle disputes.  Germany also accepted the permanent demilitarization of the Rhineland, and was itself accepted into the League of Nations as an equal partner.¹⁰¹

 

What did Locarno – a series of treaties between nations - mean from the perspective of collective security?  The conundrum is best stated by Kissinger as follows, “…if collective security was in fact reliable, Locarno was unnecessary; and if Locarno was necessary, the League of Nations was, by definition, inadequate to assure the security of even its principle founding members.”¹⁰² 

 

From the perspective of France’s march to war, recall that she was not so much marching at this point as simply trying to hold onto her gains, the major gains being the weakness of Germany and her ability to enforce this weakness at will.  In this light, Locarno can be seen as a serious defeat for France.  In essence, Germany was able to get better terms in 1925 via Locarno than she got by way of Versailles in 1919 – Locarno being the real peace treaty. 

France’s problem, therefore, remained.  Germany, as a legitimate power, even with the demilitarization of the Rhineland, now represented a threat against which France could not take “preventative measures”, specifically because Locarno also guaranteed Germany’s borders against France.  From this point forward, the French had to remain inactive as the Germans strengthened their position, secure in the West, and seemingly free to take action in the East.  In short, from now on France could only watch as her gains from her last successful march to war diminished.  With this, it is suggested that the need to consider another march to war would correspondingly increase.

 

Locarno was not the only treaty negotiated between the nations of Europe and the world in the 1920’s.  In 1928, the Kellogg-Briand Pact was concluded between what was, by 1929, forty nations of the world.  This Pact, in essence, outlaws war (it is still in effect) as a policy option for all signatories, effectively making aggressive war illegal.  The two main articles of the pact are as follows:

 

Article 1 – The High Contracting parties solemnly declare in the names of their respective peoples that they condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it, as an instrument of national policy in their relations with one another.

 

Article 2 – The High Contracting parties agree that the settlement or solution of all disputes or conflicts of whatever nature or of whatever origin they may be, which may arise among them, shall never be sought except by pacific means.

 

It should be noted that the right of self-defence is not outlined anywhere in this Pact.  It is generally considered, however, that because this was not abolished, the right to self-defence being generally considered an ancient part of the international legal system, it remains in force.¹⁰³ 

 

The problem for nations like France which may have wanted to march to war to protect their interests was fairly obvious – war was now illegal.  Because of this, all “self-help”, or “preventative actions” were at an end.  To go to war, a nation now had to create a situation in which it could justify its actions based on self-defence.  This represented a tremendous challenge for the French, as shall be seen.

 

The End of the Policy of Containment:  The years before 1933 had seen the world gain some hope in an apparently functioning League of Nations system, and a lessening of tensions by way of a French and Allied withdrawal from the Rhineland in the summer of 1930.¹⁰⁴  After this came a quick slide into a world-wide and debilitating depression.  Carr describes this as follows,

 

Throughout 1930, it was still possible to believe that the crisis was a disagreeable, but passing, phase in the economic life of the world which would be surmounted without any fundamental disturbance of the organism.  But the winter of 1930-31 shattered the last defences of optimism; and serious people began to talk of the impending collapse of civilization.¹⁰⁵

 

Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933 following a period of extreme economic depression in Germany which ripened the situation in favour of the Nazi party.¹⁰⁶  Prior to this, the nations of the world had been negotiating disarmament at a world Disarmament Conference, in accordance with both Versailles and the League Covenant.  The German position at the disarmament conference was simple; all nations should disarm down to the level of Germany under Versailles, or Germany should be entitled to rearm.¹⁰⁷  France would not accept this position, and after months of wrangling, Germany withdrew from both the Conference and the League of Nations in October 1933.¹⁰⁸  After the holding of a plebiscite in the Saar region, in accordance with Versailles, Hitler, on March 16, 1935, announced that it intended to rearm, setting its peacetime army at 550,000 men in 36 divisions, raised by way of conscription.¹⁰⁹

 

What of the French march to war? At this point, France’s post-World War One strategy of containment was clearly at an end.  From here each antagonist would jockey for position over the next four years, culminating in the French declaration of war against Germany.  In light of this it is submitted that it was the rearmament of Germany that started the French off on their next march to war, by so obviously signaling that the containment policy was over.

 

In January of 1935, France had concluded an agreement with Italy by which each power undertook to consult the other should the independence of Austria become an issue.¹¹⁰  Britain, Italy and France also confirmed their Locarno undertakings at Stresa in April of 1935, pledging opposition to any unilateral alteration of treaties threatening the general peace.¹¹¹  These actions were clearly aimed at Germany.  With Germany now a Great Power again, France was following the strategy followed at the Congress of Vienna, and was starting to build a series of stronger alliances around a recovering Germany to keep her constrained.

 

Unfortunately, this alliance with Italy also contained a secret protocol which gave to Italy economic interests in Abyssinia.  The Italians saw this as an approval for military intervention, and they invaded Abyssinia on October 3, 1935.¹¹²  The failure of the League of Nations to come to the aid of Abyssinia in response to this naked aggression spelled the end of collective security as an option for the maintenance of peace.¹¹³  Within a year, on October 14, 1936, Belgium, alarmed that the death of collective security, and worried about the implications of the Franco-Soviet Pact (mentioned below), cancelled her alliance with France, and declared neutrality.¹¹⁴

 

Note that France had granted at least economic rights in Abyssinia to Italy, in secret, with what must have been a full understanding of the history of animosity between these two countries.  The invasion could hardly have been a surprise to the French, who actively supported it at the League.  Consider Shirer on this point,

 

On October 10, 1935, one week after Mussolini’s legions invaded Abyssinia, fifty nations in the League Assembly agreed that Italy ‘had resorted to war’ in violation of the Covenant and they voted to apply sanctions under Article 16.  Yielding to the pressure of he British, who took the lead at Geneva, and of French public opinion, Lava reluctantly went along with the decisions of the League.  But he immediately went to work to see that no sanctions were applied which might harm Italy’s effort to conquer Abyssinia.¹¹⁵

 

It is hard not to conclude, therefore, that by this agreement with Italy, France gave up any hope it may have had for collective security – something we have seen France did not really trust in any event.  From the perspective of a march to war, France should be seen as looking to provide for her own security from this point on.

 

In May of 1935, France concluded a pact with the Soviet Union.¹¹⁶  As was noted in the Historiography section when reviewing Carr and Adamthwaite, Germany saw this as a repudiation of the “spirit of Locarno”, and responded by invading and remilitarizing the Rhineland.  As noted in Carr, Germany thought that this action by France had deprived the treaty of its “inner meaning”.¹¹⁷  This is not explained in Carr or in Adamthwaite for whom the occupation was just military aggression by Germany.  What may this have meant?

 

This aspect is crucial for the thesis that France was marching to war as it exposes a possible method.  Recall that Locarno secured the Western borders of Germany, and demilitarized the Rhineland, which it left the Eastern borders of Germany unsecured.  It seems obvious then that one of the “inner meanings” of Locarno was a German free hand in the East in return for her guarantees in the West.  By concluding a pact with the Soviet Union, a country not party to Locarno, France, in an obvious attempt to set up a “two front war” scenario, threatened Germany’s Eastern border, which was something she had implicitly undertaken not to do.  The German response then seems logical – if Germany lost her free hand in the East, she in return withdrew her quid pro quo in the West, namely, a demilitarized Rhineland. 

 

This scenario may have set up a larger pattern.  In order to go to war, France had to arrange to be attacked by Germany – that was the practical effect of Kellogg-Briand.  What followed over the next few years is usually seen as German malfeasance as she broke her word again and again, annexing, occupying, and eventually invading her neighbors.  That there is truth in this is obvious. 

 

What was also true was the fact that France, through her inaction, and through a later Declaration of Friendship with Germany, may have permitted Germany to think that she actually did have a free hand in the East.  When one thinks that it was a German invasion of a country in Eastern Europe, that had been guaranteed by France and Britain, which sparked the French declaration of war, the set-up should be obvious.  In short, the Germans may have been bluffed into thinking that they could have Poland, and when they came to collect their “prize”, they provided France with the raison d’etre she needed to declare war in self-defence.  But before this could happen, France needed three things: 1) to rearm, 2) a willing populace, and 3) a powerful ally.

 

France Rearms:  France’s immediate response to the remilitarization of the Rhineland was rearmament.  As Jackson noted, “Rearmament only became a priority after Germany’s reoccupation of the Rhineland in March 1936.”¹¹⁸  Note that she had already sought to make herself secure against a future attack by Germany through the construction of the Maginot Line between 1930 and 1935.¹¹⁹ 

 

The total funds devoted to this rearmament were 14 billion francs in September of 1936, with the goal of constructing 3,200 tanks.¹²⁰  Priority was also given to producing 1,339 bombers and 756 fighters.¹²¹  In March 1938, following the German annexation of Austria, another 12 billion francs were ear-marked for armaments.¹²²  Note that by the time the fighting started in May 1940, the French had a slight superiority over the Germans in armour, but were still well behind in terms of air power.¹²³  In terms of manpower, the Germans mobilized 2,758,000 men in September 1939, and the French mobilized 2,776,000 men, meaning that the armies were very close in overall size.  The French also had superiority in heavy artillery, but a deficiency in anti-tank and anti-aircraft guns.¹²⁴ 

 

The point here is not to get into the specifics of weaponry, production, comparative economic potential and the like, rather, it is to simply illustrate that the French rearmed following the end of the containment policy, and Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland.  In terms of the march to war, this reoccupation by Germany functioned as an excuse allowing France to rearm without facing opposition internally or externally from a world that only two years before had witnessed a general Disarmament Conference.  Without the remilitarization of the Rhineland, French rearmament could have been much more politically difficult.  As it was, the rearmament process was inaugurated by the Popular Front government of Leon Blum, the very Left-wing politician that the Right in France would blame for having left France unprepared.

 

Note also the other possible role of the Maginot Line.  It was built during the years after Kellogg-Briand, and could be seen as defensive in nature.  But one of France’s perennial problems was her lower population versus that of the Germans.  The Maginot Line permitted the most vulnerable areas in France to be held with minimal force, while the cream of the French armies struck north toward the German border through Belgium.  In short, it operated as a “force multiplier”, while isolating the battle to another country, which also permitting the main French armies to approach the border of the acknowledged enemy.  For a France bled white in the First World War and anxious to avoid the repeat destruction of her North East frontier, this made eminent sense.  Note that from the perspective of a possible march to war, there is little defensive about this.

 

Munich, Pacifism, and the Politics of Trading-Up Alliances:  Germany annexed Austria in March of 1938.   She then almost immediately demanded the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia, alleging mistreatment of ethnic Germans in the area.⁰

 

^{The particularities of the Munich Crisis are well known.  Britain took the lead in responding to the German demands.  After much wrangling, and three mobilizations by France, Czechoslovakia, and Germany the Czech Sudetenland was surrendered by France and Britain to Germany and Chamberlain and Hitler signed a Declaration of Peace - famously hailed as “Peace in our time” by Chamberlain.  The Czechs were not present when the deal carving up their country was signed.   The effect of this was to denude Czechoslovakia of her defences in the North against Germany, leaving her wide open to invasion, occupation and dismemberment five months later.} 

 

^{While the French went along with this, the high water mark of appeasement, they also had a treaty of mutual defence with Czechoslovakia.  Thus begs the question, why did France not fight for Czechoslovakia?}

 

^{France actually mobilized at the time of Munich.  Her professional military, however, held out little hope for success in a war against Germany at the time.  Williamson notes that, “At a meeting with the British in late September Gamelin gave a most discouraging picture.  Although he admitted that the Wehrmacht had weak forces in the west, he suggested that the French army would have to wait until the government had evacuated the major cities before beginning military operations.”126}  This reflects the general fear that was apparent at the time of German air power.  As Williamson further notes, the French feared that, “…weakness in the air would allow the enemy to launch massive and repetitive attacks against the great population centers of France without effective French retaliation.”¹²⁷  This implies then, from the perspective of the march to war, that the French simply did not think that they were ready to take on Germany in 1938.  That they were likely wrong in this is immaterial – it is what they thought they were doing that counts.

 

At Munich, Daladier put the dilemma of the Allies, as they were to be, as follows,

 

We were then placed in the following dilemma: Either say ‘no’ to the Sudeten demands and therefore encourage the Czech Government to intransigence and the German Government to aggression, provoke an armed conflict that would have for result the destruction of Czechoslovakia herself; or else, try to find a compromise through negotiations.⁰

 

^{One may notice the contradictions here, and how Germany was apparently not the source of the Sudeten demands, the Sudetens were.  Also, the amazing statement that Daladier feared Czech intransigence.  In the end he concluded that, “The Czech Government in its heroic devotion to the cause of Peace accepted the plan.”0  As if, after having abandoned by its ally of almost 2 decades, they had any choice in the matter.}

 

^{But the moral machinations of the French vis a vis the Czechs are irrelevant here.  From the perspective of the march to war, by the end of the Munich crisis, France had effectively lost a powerful ally in Czechoslovakia, but through Britain’s involvement, she had come much closer to obtaining a real alliance with the one ally she thought she needed.  In short, she had “traded-up”, with the result being the possibility of a more effective march to war against Germany when the time came - a march she did not think she was ready for in 1938 anyway.}

 

^{France also conclude a Declaration of Peace with Germany following this crisis.  This was an extremely important development from the perspective of a march to war.  As Shirer noted,}

 

^{The French Foreign Minister, basking in what he thought was his triumph in saving the peace at Munich, had persuaded the cabinet to approve his signing a Declaration of Friendship with Germany similar to the one wrung by Chamberlain from Hitler the morning after the Munich Conference....Bonnet regarded the Declaration as a further triumph for himself and for his diplomacy of getting along with the Germans.  Ribbentrop left Paris with his own interpretation of his talks with the French Foreign Minister and quickly passed it on to Hitler.  This was that France had given Germany a free hand in eastern Europe.  Bonnet would later deny it.0}

 

^{From the perspective of a march to war, with the Germans thinking that they had a free hand in the East, the die was almost cast.}   

 

^{In March of 1939, Hitler completed the take-over of Czechoslovakia, with the result being a joint British-French guarantee to Poland.0}  Should Germany attack Poland, France’s preconditions for a successful march to war would be complete as Britain had, for the first time, guaranteed the integrity of a country in Eastern Europe against German aggression - something she refused to do at Locarno.  This is reflected in speeches made by Daladier at the time in which he noted that, on May 11, 1939, “Solidarity between France and Britain is closer and more trusting than ever. It remains the basis of French policy, and we will not allow it to be weakened...”^{0 There we have it - alliance with Britain was “the basis of French policy”.  Clemenceau’s quest stated as far back as Versailles, namely for an ally, had been achieved.  That it came at the price of another ally is indicative of the French resolve.}

 

^{In assessing the possible French march to war in the Munich period, mention must also be made of French pacifism and the attitudes of the French people to war throughout the period.  The reason for this is two-fold.  First, as has been noted, in order to have a successful march to war, the population must be convinced to join in.  Secondly, and related to this, prior to Munich France was essentially pacifist, but by July 1939, she had become more bellicose.  By the time war was declared in September 1939, pacifism as a movement was essentially dead. 0}  This sea-change in opinion needs to be explored.

 

The origins of French pacifism between the wars should be obvious.  With 1.3 million killed during The Great War, 1.1 million invalids to take care of afterward, and massive destruction in the North-East section of the country, the French had no appetite for going through that again.⁰  Pacifism, therefore, appeared to grow deep roots in the French psyche reflected in trade unions, art and literature, and in pacifist organizations, even usurping patriotism which was said to have “died in the mud of Verdun”.⁰ 

 

But perhaps French pacifism was not all that encompassing.  There were strong reasons why it may have been less than what it seemed.  For example, Peter Farrugia, commenting on the particularities of French pacifism stated as follows,

 

On the most basic of levels, French geography and demography conspired against pacific philosophies…France…was a large state, located in a central position in Europe and unprotected by a ring of water.  Its history was filled with the horrors of invasion.  Moreover, its demography was such that the peasant, with his passionate attachment to the land, played an important role in shaping attitudes towards peace and war.  The peasant, something of a xenophobe, did not share the scruples of the international banker when it was a matter of fighting in defence of his land.

 

The predominate myth in France militated against pacifism.  The myth of the nation armee glorified the taking up of arms in the name of the homeland…¹³⁶

 

As noted, by September 1939, pacifism was essentially dead, with French public opinion having moved from 57% in support of Munich in October of 1938, to 70% in favour of resisting further German demands by July of 1939.¹³⁷  Jackson gives the following reasons for this change,

 

…the feeling, after March 1939, that Hitler had proved he could no longer be trusted; the patriotic mood created by Mussolini’s sabre-rattling demands for French colonies; the economic recovery that had started at the end of 1938; the popularity of Daladier.¹³⁸

 

What Jackson does not cover is the question of government manipulation in regards to this sea-change in opinion.  The fact is that Hitler had gone back on his word before Munich, and the French populace had not resolved against Germany.  Regardless of the explanation for this change in opinion, in regards to the French march to war, by September of 1939, the French populace was willing to face what the future had in store.  The attitude of the French on the eve of the Second World War is best summed up by Marc Bloch, “’They’re always picking a quarrel with the rest of the world.  The more we give ‘em, the more they’ll want.  It just can’t go on like this.’”¹³⁹

 

France’s Declaration of War:  France declared war on Germany, not he other way around, and yet this was and still is seen as a defensive war.  Hitler was apparently shocked.^{0  This begs the question of why France went to war over Poland on September 3, 1939?}  

 

^{The obvious answer is that France was simply acting in accordance with her alliance with Poland.  But the immediate issue in question was that of the Polish Corridor demanded by Germany, and as Daladier stated after the war, France was not about to fight for Danzig.141}  So why did France fight?  Why Poland, and not Czechoslovakia?

 

Consider that France let the Rhineland be remilitarized, and Austria and Czechoslovakia be occupied before she took any action.  Her action came only after it was obvious that the British would intervene as an ally of France.  In terms of the march to war, it could be argued that this satisfied her third requirement after rearmament and a willing populace, which was a powerful ally.  The march to war against Germany occurred on September 3, 1939 then because, in the minds of the French, it could.  In reflecting on why this mattered, we may again return to Clemenceau who once said that, “Germany believes that the logic of her victory means domination, while we do not believe that the logic of our defeat is serfdom.”¹⁴²  In the end, France was fearful of Germany, with this based heavily on her treatment after the Franco-Prussian War.  Events in France between July 1940, and August 1944 showed they had reason for concern.

 

That is not to say that the war went as planned.  Between September of 1939 and May 1940 the French populace was actually anxious to get at Germany – in this case the people actually appeared ahead of the French leadership in terms of their willingness to fight.¹⁴³  And yet, nothing happened until the German assault.

 

It is not possible to go into a detailed analysis here into why the French held off attacking Germany prior to May 1940.  Suffice it to say that, in terms of the marching to war thesis, it is most probable that the French military leadership was thinking of a long war and simply did not think that they were yet ready.^{0  On the ability of the French army to win, there was certainly no doubt in Daladier’s mind, as noted in the Historiography (note 50).  This is confirmed by May’s recounting of the arrogance of the French military at the start of May 1940.145}  It is at this point that an analysis of why the French were beaten could logically begin.  As the purpose of this second part of the paper was simply to show that it can be argued that France sought a war against Germany in the years leading up to 1939, this question will be left to others.

 

Conclusion - Further Questions and Considerations:   This paper has attempted to illustrate that it can be argued that France was marching to war in the years between 1919 and 1939.  The argument is summarized as follows.

 

First and foremost it was necessary to make the admission that for the first decade, France was attempting to just hold onto her gains from her last successful march to war, from 1914 to 1918. 

 

After this, France became more concerned with the need to defeat Germany yet again, especially in the light of growing German strength, and Germany’s expressed intent to rearm.  In response, France herself rearmed, and bided her time while acting as if Eastern Europe was truly none of her concern - all in spite of alliances with a number of countries in the area - until she had secured the one ally she though she needed, namely Britain. 

 

Once this had been secured, France declared war on Germany at the first opportunity, as a result of German aggression against Poland; aggression which Germany could reasonably have thought would not be seen as a vital interest to France largely because of the signals that France herself had been sending.  France therefore set up a situation in which she could claim that she was acting in “self-defence”, or at least in defence of an ally in response to an action that she may have, in fact, sanctioned well in advance. 

 

France neglected to attack Germany between September of 1939 and May of 1940 mainly because she did not yet see herself as strong enough to overwhelm Germany.  In the end, the Germans struck first, overwhelming France in 6 weeks - c’est la guerre!

 

It should be kept in mind that the purpose of the second half of the paper was just to explore whether or not the above argument could even be made.  It is suggested that the answer is clearly “yes”.  There are many problems with this argument, however, and many questions that need to be answered before it can be considered cogent.  These are explored below.

 

First and foremost, we do not know exactly what the French leadership was thinking throughout this period, or what were their true intents - rather, we have only clues.  For example, the second part of the paper started with Clemenceau and Foch, and their attitudes regarding Germany at Versailles.  This seems reasonable given that these men were the military and civilian leaders of the country at the time, and would therefore have presumably represented a consensus opinion within the government. 

 

More than that, it was also possible to discern historic French prejudices and preferences from both of these men that would have informed the rest of period prior to 1939.  Whether these were in fact accurate, we do not know for sure.  The first question to be answered in strengthening the thesis then, involves an analysis of what the French leadership actually thought it was doing during these years, not in terms of press releases and the like, but in terms of, for example, internal government memoranda shorn of any need to deceive.

 

Public opinion is a crucial consideration if the question is one of peace or war.  The extent to which the French leadership attempted to manipulate public opinion, whether through press manipulation, manufactured incidents, exaggerated responses, or little white lies covering larger secret truths is worth looking at as well.  Note that while this is an interesting topic in and of itself, from the perspective of a possible march to war, it is in how the French leadership sought to manipulate public opinion that one would provide powerful clues as to what their real intentions were.

 

Specific events also need a closer look.  In particular, the French invasion/occupation of 1923; The Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928; the Franco-Russian Treaty of 1935; and the Franco-German Declaration of Friendship of 1938 are crucial.

 

The first of these, if the marching thesis is true, would have been seen by the French leadership not as an attempt to recover reparations, but primarily as an attempt to keep Germany to heel.  An analysis of French government archives, and in particular, any secret archives, would shed light on the majority French attitude – majority in that it is likely that obtaining reparations was at least part of the equation.

 

An analysis of the French understanding of the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and what it meant for the French strategic position in Europe, would also yield most interesting results.  Recall that it was this Pact that most clearly limited French military options in terms of keeping Germany at bay.  One would want to know if the French thought that Kellogg-Briand represented an opportunity, or a threat in assessing how this may support or refute the march to war thesis.  In short, if it was seen as a threat, one could surmise that the French saw themselves as more marching than not.

 

Also, given that the Germans saw the Franco-Russian Treaty as a betrayal of the “Spirit of Locarno”, it would be worthwhile exploring what the French thought they were actually doing via this treaty.  As has been noted, this treaty implied a reversal of Germany’s free-hand in Eastern Europe that Locarno itself had implied – why else would France threaten a two-front war?  This was given by the Germans as the rationale for the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, which itself resulted in rearmament by France.  Was the Russian treaty calculated to bring about German antagonism which would itself justify a necessary rearmament?  The interests that the French though this treaty served would shed light on this.  

 

Finally, given Kellogg-Briand, the only way that France could go to war against Germany was in self-defence.  French understanding of the third element then, namely the Franco-German Declaration of Friendship, is crucial as it was this treaty that may have constituted the essential “set-up” of Germany which resulted in France successfully claiming that she was not waging aggressive war.  More precisely, and as has been noted, everything that France did between Locarno to Munich can be interpreted as signalling to the Germans that Eastern Europe was essentially their sphere of influence - from Locarno itself, to inactivity in the face of the loss of Austria and Czechoslovakia.  Certainly, it appears that the Germans seemed to think this was the essence of the Franco-German Declaration of 1938.  When, however, the French declared war in September of 1939 over Poland, the Germans were apparently shocked.  In light of this, it may prove most interesting to explore the real nature of this treaty in the minds of the French.  If this can be seen as a “set-up”, the march to war thesis should be considered virtually proven.         

 

There are many other questions which operate seemingly on the periphery which need addressing to complete the picture.

 

Recall the “conspiracy theorists”.  One proposal put forth was that the Right, meaning French fascists and the military, essentially gave up on the war on purpose (Shirer, Simone), or even purposely lost the battle.  If this can be shown to be true, then it may be reasonable to assume that they also aggressively marched to their military doom in order to secure their domestic political triumph, and therefore that France was involved in a march to war prior to September 1939.

 

The Right, particularly Maurras, actually accused the Left of marching to war.  If this can be shown to be correct, it would also strengthen the thesis. 

 

In the paper, however, not much attention was paid to the ideologies and personalities of the French leadership, as it was assumed that the people running France were part of an elite which, in regards to matters of foreign affairs, had essentially the same interests, and which would follow largely the same policies if in power.  This is obviously a debatable point. 

 

That being said, it cannot be denied that the Left armed France, and that the Right genuinely yearned for victory - fascists finding military defeat most uncomfortable.  Prior to answering questions concerning the Left and the Right, their particular political leanings and the possible effects of this on a march to war, it is suggested that one must first make out the case that there were, in fact, differences between these parties - that the differing political ideologies made any real difference at all on France as she contemplated war in the years before 1939.  It is submitted that it is not at all clear that this is the case, and until it is, it is not clear where discussions about ideologies lead.

 

In terms of a conclusion, it is worth considering that present French security is build on a European edifice that is itself resting on German war-guilt, the result of which is to leave the French as the political leaders in continental Europe, with Germany as their powerful partner. And what if the war was actually started by way of French diplomatic and military manipulation?  As Confucius once wrote, “There is deceit and cunning and from these wars arise.”  One expects that, should this in fact be the case, it would not be admitted to readily by the French until well into the very distant future - if ever.

 

Understanding War and Society

 

What are we to make of this French march to war from the point of view of war and society generally?

 

Another way to consider France’s march is to realize that there were likely two marches underway at the same time, each feeding off the other – France and Germany locked in a dance of death.  The “tit-for-tat” build-up to aggression leading to war in situations like this, which sees each side issue threats and commit aggressive acts against the other ostensibly in response to the other side’s threats and aggressive acts, worked in 1939 for both parties, and it works even today.  Leaders who play this game, and who issue threats or order aggressive acts “in response” can assess full well what the other side’s response will most likely be well in advance.  It is a response expected and even hoped-for on the road to an escalation to war that is often desired by both parties. 

 

Encouraging one side to resist the temptation to respond even in the face of the gravest of atrocities, and exposing purposeful escalation as a “march to war” would obviously assist in halting that very march to war in its tracks.  Halting escalation is, in fact, the essence of peace-keeping – a real contribution to world peace.  This would have availed the world nothing in 1939 however, as both sides were eventually intent on aggression.     

 

What to do?

 

There seem to be two basic philosophical approaches to the problem of war.  The first approach could look at the history of marches to war for a contribution to our understanding of how nations go to war, and assert that by better understanding this process of marching to war – how decisions are made, by whom and for what purpose, and how these are then translated into the mobilization of the population - perhaps we can learn how to avoid war in the future.  In light of this, future questions worthy of exploration could include how information is gathered and assessed within the intelligence bureaucracies that served the French leaders who led France into war in the years leading up to 1939.  In looking at this, historians would be seeking access to the “secret nation” which existed outside of public scrutiny, and to delve into how this world operates in the search for answers and possible proscriptions for the future.  Should such an exploration reveal patterns of behavior common to all societies that inevitably lead to war, and methods by which these may be expunged, the service to humanity that such a turn of events would present is obvious.

 

A second approach could suggest otherwise - at least a modification.  It may be that as the history of this period is further explored, historians may come to understand better how leaders manipulate their peoples in order to march to war, but also that as every politician - democrat and tyrant alike – knows, people can only be lead where they are willing to go; in other words, that the “secret nation” can only manipulate to a limited extent.  Regarding France, note that it appeared at times that the leadership was often behind the people in terms of the march to war, not ahead of them.  Was this by design, or did it represent a leadership out of control?  In light of this, the questions to be explored further could center on the psychology of peoples, not the machinations of leaders and their advisors.  The answers to the Human curse of war may therefore lie not at the head of society, but within its soul.

 

In that respect, it should be obvious that both tyrants and democrats need to justify their actions, especially over such matters as war, because popular opinion always matters to every politician, everywhere.  The tremendous advantage that democratic politicians have over tyrants is a mandate to govern that permits them to set aside worry about what the people are thinking, and to just get on with the job of governing.  More than that, should they lose an election and thereby lose power, they are always free to try to come back again another day – losing power for a democrat does not mean non-existence. 

 

Democrats then, having the luxury of a mandate, have nothing to fear from letting liberty and the best in humanity flourish, including what may be a natural human pacifism.  Perhaps this is the essential explanation for the fact that, generally-speaking, liberal democracies do not fight wars against one another, nor do they experience famine.  In short, liberty is liberating for leaders and citizens alike, and the results benefit everyone.

 

Tyrants, on the other hand, who never assess the will of the people in any meaningful way, must always worry.  To stay in power, they must manufacture the illusion of the positive while at the same time emphasizing the negative, and especially the triumvirate of “fear, national crises, and enemies of the people”.  This approach must always lead to a war of some sort, whether it is a war against some internal societal scourge, or actual external aggression.  In matters of external aggression, tyrants mobilize their people by playing on the natural divisions and hatreds that burn in the soul of many a nation.  These divisions and hatreds immediately come to be the essence of the wars that are subsequently fought, and they seriously limit the ability of tyrants to control the events that follow.  In a tyranny, not even the tyrant is free.

 

In considering the various democratic and tyrannical motivations that both sparked the Second World War, and which governed its progress, it may be trite to say that this was much more than just a war.  Once launched, it quickly became a battle between the negativity needed and encouraged by tyranny on the one side – culminating in horror that will always exist where one finds humanity led by those who are operating absent a higher morality - and the common human decency of the liberal democracies that sought to stop it. 

 

The tragedy of the pre-war years then may not be that democratic politicians sought to lead their nations in a march to war.  It may be that those who could have, and who should have mobilized citizens who were willing to be led in the name of this same common human decency - that is the democratic politicians of the West - simply abandoned their duty, and in doing so permitted horror and hatred to grow and flourish, culminating in war that could have been stopped long before it happened.  Along with a better understanding of the psychology of peoples then – and, it is suggested, such an analysis should look closely at the psychology of people absent the direction of a higher morality - it may also be worth exploring how leaders in democracies sometimes come to forget their most essential duties, and the most obvious interests of their citizens – interests easily understood by the citizens themselves.