Historical Help: Munich 1938

[Chaircat Meow]

This thread is inspired by something a poster (Werthead) said on the US politics thread but is itself nothing to do with US politics or with Trump.

According to Werthead

''Hitler's moves were pre-meditated, carefully considered - apart from when his opponents fucked up and gave him an opening he could use, like at Munich where he was in literal stupefied disbelief at Chamberlain's piece of paper when France, Britain and Russia could have torn through Germany like it was tissue paper at the time ...''

I am simply interested in whether the bolded is true. Is it the case that Britain and France's decision to hand over the Sudetenland to Hitler (in return for worthless guarantees) was a major strategic mistake because had they fought then, they would have won, or, at least, would have had a much greater chance of winning than when they did fight in 1939.

I can fully see why the deal was humiliating for us, and immoral and did no good. My question though is whether it is reasonable to suppose that Britain and France's chances of defeating Hitler, had we responded with force, in 1938, would have been improved relative to when we did choose to fight in 1939.

It seems to me this is not the case but I am interested in opinions.

I think this is an important topic because the Munich agreement (and Neville Chamberlain's piece of paper) is one of the those infamous events that has entered the political and public consciousness of western nations and is often a point of reference in current foreign policy debates. We are often told that appeasement is not an option with regard to current Russian aggression, or whatever other threats there are, and Munich stands as the ultimate proof. However, if it transpires going to war in 1939 really did not make winning any more difficult it would appear that Munich, although humiliating and arguably immoral, was not really the great strategic blunder it is sometimes portrayed as.

I am asking the board because I know there are a number of posters here with very good WWII knowledge (far better than mine) and I'm interested in what they think. I am also interested in what anyone else thinks as well. I don't have the time to do my own research in this case.

 

[Toth]

Well, while Werthead's assessment was meant as a pointed simplification, it is an interesting question to be sure. Though I don't know what you expect for an answer. Every kind of offensive on the side of the allies would have been easier than tanking Blitzkrieg. The only question is how fast they would have been able to mobilize their troops (allowing the Germans to relocate their troops and fight back - after all, the disarmament of the treaty of Versailles was already completely erased). It is also dubious the Russians would have joined, because Stalin frankly wouldn't have cared enough and even though the non-aggression pact in the wake of the joint invasion of Poland wasn't made yet, the Soviets helped the Germans train their troops and Stalin hoped to cooperate with Hitler some more to help his own expansionist policy. I highly doubt he would have buried these thoughts over such small fries. So then it would have been only France and England. France, still sore about WW1 and aghast over the dismantling of the Versailles treaty might have spearheaded an intervention to contain Germany, but it would have likely only been localized and not a full out war.

If you want to theorize a bit, supporting Poland would have been the most sensible thing to do in 1939. When the German forces were occupied in the east, opening a second front to sandwich Germany early on would have been the best possible action for the Western Allies in my humble opinion. And this act of unabashed aggression would have been reason enough for full mobilization as well.

[Hereward]

I suppose it's true if you ignore diplomacy, geopolitics, national mood and morale. The French didn't want to fight, in fact they were practically on the verge of civil war. The government also trusted to the Maginot Line and were convinced that if they called on the army to attack, they would mutiny. The British were rearming fast, but they were concentrating on the air force, particularly fighters. they had little or nothing to attack with. Also, the British didn't trust the Soviets and were convinced that if they allied with Stalin to stop Hitler, they'd be ceding the whole of central and eastern Europe to him in perpetuity. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

9 minutes ago, Hereward said:

I suppose it's true if you ignore diplomacy, geopolitics, national mood and morale. The French didn't want to fight, in fact they were practically on the verge of civil war. The government also trusted to the Maginot Line and were convinced that if they called on the army to attack, they would mutiny. The British were rearming fast, but they were concentrating on the air force, particularly fighters. they had little or nothing to attack with. Also, the British didn't trust the Soviets and were convinced that if they allied with Stalin to stop Hitler, they'd be ceding the whole of central and eastern Europe to him in perpetuity. 

^^^^THIS.

You have to consider that the French countryside bore the brunt of the action on the Western Front for almost the entirety of WWI. The allies simply did not want to fight, and they were forced to consider that they had forced Germany into signing an armistice that was both unfair and likely to spark another conflict.

[Bennis of the Brown Shield]

2 hours ago, Toth said:

Well, while Werthead's assessment was meant as a pointed simplification, it is an interesting question to be sure. Though I don't know what you expect for an answer. Every kind of offensive on the side of the allies would have been easier than tanking Blitzkrieg. The only question is how fast they would have been able to mobilize their troops (allowing the Germans to relocate their troops and fight back - after all, the disarmament of the treaty of Versailles was already completely erased). It is also dubious the Russians would have joined, because Stalin frankly wouldn't have cared enough and even though the non-aggression pact in the wake of the joint invasion of Poland wasn't made yet, the Soviets helped the Germans train their troops and Stalin hoped to cooperate with Hitler some more to help his own expansionist policy. I highly doubt he would have buried these thoughts over such small fries. So then it would have been only France and England. France, still sore about WW1 and aghast over the dismantling of the Versailles treaty might have spearheaded an intervention to contain Germany, but it would have likely only been localized and not a full out war.

If you want to theorize a bit, supporting Poland would have been the most sensible thing to do in 1939. When the German forces were occupied in the east, opening a second front to sandwich Germany early on would have been the best possible action for the Western Allies in my humble opinion. And this act of unabashed aggression would have been reason enough for full mobilization as well.

I believe that was the original Allied war plan, and it probably would have worked hadn't Poland fallen so quickly, because of the Soviet Union allying with Germany and attacking them from behind. 

AFAIK the original idea was to tie up the Germans in Poland for as long as possible (by supplying them with war materials through the Balkans and so on, plus the fact that Poland's military actually wasn't all that weak at the end of the day) while France and the British Empire meanwhile got time to fully mobilize their forces, which they then would use to conduct a counterinvasion of Germany from the west. As for the original question in the topic, I think the fact that the Western Allies thought they needed so much additional time even as late as in 1939, before they considered themselves ready to launch an offensive, kind of implies that they ought to have been even less capable for such things in 1938. 

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

First thing I thought of when I saw the thread title...

 

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

I am asking the board because I know there are a number of posters here with very good WWII knowledge (far better than mine) and I'm interested in what they think. I am also interested in what anyone else thinks as well. I don't have the time to do my own research in this case.

If you google the question, there's quite a lot of discussion about it, some historians and counterfactual arguments for and some against. Harry Turtledove also wrote a trilogy about it where he concluded that we would have won (although not without cost).

The main argument against is that the powers involved didn't know what we know now about the relative states of the French, British, Russian and German forces in 1938, particularly the fact that a lot of the German equipment was still pretty poor. They had the Stuka but most of their armored forces were Panzer Is and IIs, which were crap. They had a few IIIs and a vanishingly small number of early-production run IVs, but not many at all (in fact, the IIIs and IVs still made up less than 10% of the total tank strength in the invasion of Poland a year later). Compare that to the Russian and French tanks and it's the disparity in strength is quite startling. The German war machine in WWII was impressive, but it also took shape extremely quickly, particularly in 1939-40; in 1938 a lot of the good stuff was still in prototyping or not even off the drawing board (or not even on it).

OTOH, Britain wasn't exactly locked, loaded and ready to go in 1938 either, and it's questionable if the dominions would have joined in as readily as they did in 1939. It would have fallen to France and Russia to undertake most of the ground fighting. France had some pretty good equipment which was better for attack than in defence (which, along with being in the wrong place, is why Germany won so easily in 1940) but it was still hamstrung by a lack of good modern military theory, in particular dispersing its tank forces through the infantry rather than assemble them in massed formations like Germany. France fought WWII like it was still fighting WWI, which was why it didn't do very well (apart from those few generals who did have some more modern nous). So it falls to Russia, and if that had joined in then we would have won. The sheer overwhelming numbers it could bring to bear, combined with Germany fighting on multiple fronts and the superiority of Russian tanks (especially if they were able to deploy the KV-1 earlier) would have made a German victory unlikely.

There's also Czechoslovakia itself to consider, which is not exactly an easy country to invade and occupy against armed resistance, especially given that they'd built quite substantial fortifications (a smaller-scaled version of the Maginot Line, actually based on the French idea IIRC) which the Germans were later quite impressed by. Czechoslovakia was pretty heavily defended: it had 42 divisions to defend its territory, along with 350 tanks. It also, slightly randomly, gave its soldiers a disproportionately massive number of automatic weapons and heavy machine guns, which would have been handy in those frontier chokepoints. The opinion of the Czechoslovakian army was that it couldn't win, but it could hold out for some time. Arguably, the Czechoslovakian army was more formidable than the Polish one and had a much greater advantage in the ground they were holding (until Chamberlain gave it to Hitler, which rendered the whole question moot).

The only hesitation about that is that Germany's full reservoir of manpower had not been gradually ground up over the course of years at that point, so Germany would have had a pretty large reserve to call upon. In addition, the German generals outfought almost all of their direct equivalents at the start of the war, and Russia was even closer to having just liquidated its best generals in the purges, and there's no guarantee Stalin would have deployed Zhukov or someone with a brain, so they could have pulled something out of the bag.

The points against the idea raised by the other posters above are mostly fair, but also reflect the very reason we didn't go to war in 1938. Introduce something different to the mix and different possibilities emerge. The biggest problem in the situation is introducing a renewed vigour to the French wanting to fight, which was really lax in 1938-39 (and not great even in 1940).

Plus there's the Oster Conspiracy, which was arguably the most serious conspiracy against Hitler. Hans Oster got several of the highest-ranking members of the German armed forces to agree to carry out a coup against Hitler if he attacked the Sudetenland, as they believed Germany would not win (which is pretty damning). The other conspiracies all involved non-entities, but these guys were right up there at the very top of the chain of command: Camaris, Halder and Brauchitsch all played big roles in the war. The plot collapsed because of Chamberlain's deal, which they couldn't quite believe either.

We would have been better off in crushing Germany the second they went into the Rhineland in 1936 (Hitler even had contingency orders prepared to order a full retreat if France even crossed the border) or attacking the Ruhr in September 1939 when Germany had committed to Poland. But yeah, I think we would have won in 1938 with Russia in the mix. Without it, it's a lot less likely.

[Chaircat Meow]

Thanks for the replies everyone! I will comment in more detail tomorrow or later in the week.

Quick Q to Werthead though on the 'torn through like tissue paper' thing.

In wwi Germany fought off both France and Russia in 1914, and would have likely driven both of them into submission without British help sometime in 1916/17. Why assume Germany would be beaten easily in 1938 by the same two countries? The balance of power between France and Germany had not changed massively. Russia, in raw industrial strength was stronger than it had been in wwi (relative to Germany), but now lacked easy access to Germany, because Poland and Romania were in the way. And as the winter war proved, the Russian army, for all its size, was really not good at offensive operations.

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

As Wert indicated, the ideal time to squash Hitler in the 1930s was actually the Rheinland in 1936.

As for the Soviets, the only way they could have helped Czechoslovakia is via Poland (Romania would have been less contentious, but the Romanian railways lacked the carrying capacity). Which is a whole other can of worms, and one neither Britain nor France were prepared to open.

In defence of Chamberlain, by the way, he knew full well that this was not Peace In Our Time. It was about buying extra time for Britain to re-arm. If you want a Prime Ministerial villain, Baldwin is a much better candidate.

[Gorn]

15 hours ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

I believe that was the original Allied war plan, and it probably would have worked hadn't Poland fallen so quickly, because of the Soviet Union allying with Germany and attacking them from behind. 

AFAIK the original idea was to tie up the Germans in Poland for as long as possible (by supplying them with war materials through the Balkans and so on, plus the fact that Poland's military actually wasn't all that weak at the end of the day) while France and the British Empire meanwhile got time to fully mobilize their forces, which they then would use to conduct a counterinvasion of Germany from the west. As for the original question in the topic, I think the fact that the Western Allies thought they needed so much additional time even as late as in 1939, before they considered themselves ready to launch an offensive, kind of implies that they ought to have been even less capable for such things in 1938. 

This plan was a baseless fantasy from the start - a huge stockpile of war material (which UK and France lacked at the time) was supposed to magically appear in the Balkans, and future Axis member Romania would enthusiastically join in and dedicate their full logistical support to the Allies?

No to mention the fact that Polish army was destroyed as an effective military force within the first two weeks of German invasion. There was never going to be a second front, with or without Soviet involvement.

[Werthead]

15 hours ago, Chaircat Meow said:

In wwi Germany fought off both France and Russia in 1914, and would have likely driven both of them into submission without British help sometime in 1916/17. Why assume Germany would be beaten easily in 1938 by the same two countries? The balance of power between France and Germany had not changed massively. Russia, in raw industrial strength was stronger than it had been in wwi (relative to Germany), but now lacked easy access to Germany, because Poland and Romania were in the way. And as the winter war proved, the Russian army, for all its size, was really not good at offensive operations.

Germany's victory over Russia in WWI was a result of Germany taking advantage of the latest technology (particularly rail) to move its armies with unexpected speed to concentrate the bulk of its Eastern Front army on individual formations of the Russian Army to destroy it piecemeal and prevent the Russian armies from joining together. It then advanced very slowly into Russia, constantly consolidating its supply lines and creating defensive perimeters when the Russian Army was unable to penetrate. The Russian Army also had hideously low morale and the home front was collapsing behind them throughout the course of the war (not just the twin revolutions of 1917). The Germans also didn't advance too far into Russia and risk the climactic conditions that did for Napoleon and almost did for Hitler: the German lines at the time of the October Revolution actually didn't penetrate present-day Russia at all: they were in Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus and western Ukraine. Germany basically stumbled across the only way for a major western power to actually beat Russia (a slow, methodical advance, drawing Russian forces to their destruction against prepared positions), and Russia had to oblige them by falling for the strategy.

Germany also had geopolitical goals it wished to enforce over both France and Russia in WWI: it did not desire a total military conquest and annexation of both countries simultaneously. It was not engaging in systematic ethnic cleansing or genocide (although certainly, as always in war, civilian casualties were caused) which turned the entire country against it, as in WWII, including large pools of potential allies. If we assume that Germany could have fought off an attack in 1938, it would have likely proceeded as it did in 1941, but without the same industrial machine driving it, which is the only reason (along with surprise, Stalin's nervous breakdown and no active Western Front to distract it) that it got as far as it did. The position of Poland is also less clear in 1938: it'd have been furious at Russia having trampled over it to get to grips with Hitler, but would also not be welcoming the Nazis with open arms either. Poland is more likely to have joined Russia in attacking Germany, providing a greater strategic and geographic obstacle to climb closer to Germany itself, although without substantial tank or aircraft formations that may not have been worth a huge amount. They could have contributed tremendous manpower, however.

Finally, Russia had to split its armies to fight both Germany and a powerfully independent Austria-Hungary, and soundly defeated the latter after a lengthy campaign. This would not be a factor in WWII.

[Kouran]

Wert, the book 

GERMAN RADIO INTELLIGENCE 
BY LIEUTENANT-GENERAL ALBERT PRAUN

Points out in great detail how the German sigint knew everything there was to know about the Czech army. I think that had the Czechs decided to fight they would have been smoked. It's hard to win when your enemy knows exactly where you are and how you communicate. 

[Westerosi Coast Gangster]

my big question is if the Treaty of Versaille was not so harsh against Germany would Hitler still rise to power and would WW2 have happened? 

[A True Kaniggit]

On 1/29/2017 at 6:57 PM, Werthead said:

If you google the question, there's quite a lot of discussion about it, some historians and counterfactual arguments for and some against. Harry Turtledove also wrote a trilogy about it where he concluded that we would have won (although not without cost).

Are you talking about The War That Came Early? Six books. And as you say Turtledove came to the conclusion the allies won that war also, even though he threw Germany one helluva bone (I'm of course talking about that random as hell coup, which is the main reason I didn't like that series. That course of events just seemed waaaay to far-fetched).

I agree with most of your points though. Especially how big of a boon it was to Germany in gaining Czechia without a fight. Not only did Germany not lose manpower/equipment having to conquer the country by force, they also got the Skoda Works completely intact.

[Horza]

On 1/30/2017 at 11:57 AM, Werthead said:

 So it falls to Russia, and if that had joined in then we would have won. The sheer overwhelming numbers it could bring to bear, combined with Germany fighting on multiple fronts and the superiority of Russian tanks (especially if they were able to deploy the KV-1 earlier) would have made a German victory unlikely.

Late to the party, but I feel like this is a big problem with a lot of pre-WW2 counterfactuals, in that it's really hard to think of a politically feasible pathway to a second Triple Entente. Not only would a renewed anti-German alliance require far more trust between all three powers than existed in the late 30s, but there's also the small issue of maintaning Polish sovereignty while obliging a massive Soviet offensive against Germany.

[Werthead]

4 hours ago, Horza said:

Late to the party, but I feel like this is a big problem with a lot of pre-WW2 counterfactuals, in that it's really hard to think of a politically feasible pathway to a second Triple Entente. Not only would a renewed anti-German alliance require far more trust between all three powers than existed in the late 30s, but there's also the small issue of maintaning Polish sovereignty while obliging a massive Soviet offensive against Germany.

That's the problem. Poland is squeezed between two massive powers and it's going to get steam-rollered by one or both of them. In this counterfactual case the argument seems to generally fall that an uncaring and amoral Soviet rule is preferable to a German one actively desiring to murder a large chunk of the population, and Poland has to be sacrificed. The problem is that the UK and France were not willing to do that in 1938, with the net result that it happened anyway in 1939.

Where does the line between ideology and cold hard pragmatism fall?

[The Marquis de Leech]

On 05/02/2017 at 9:54 AM, Westerosi Coast Gangster said:

my big question is if the Treaty of Versaille was not so harsh against Germany would Hitler still rise to power and would WW2 have happened? 

It is very easy to prevent Hitler's rise to power.

It is more difficult to prevent something going wrong with international democracy at some point after WWI - more specifically, something like the Great Depression is practically inevitable in the circumstances (the economic and political tools to prevent future Depressions could not have been developed without the actual Depression, and social welfare was pretty limited). So it is entirely possible to end up with a WWII in some form, just not one featuring Hitler.

[A True Kaniggit]

16 hours ago, Werthead said:

That's the problem. Poland is squeezed between two massive powers and it's going to get steam-rollered by one or both of them. In this counterfactual case the argument seems to generally fall that an uncaring and amoral Soviet rule is preferable to a German one actively desiring to murder a large chunk of the population, and Poland has to be sacrificed. The problem is that the UK and France were not willing to do that in 1938, with the net result that it happened anyway in 1939.

Where does the line between ideology and cold hard pragmatism fall?

I've never liked this argument because it relies on the UK and France 1) Believing that Germany is going to murder a large chunk of his population and 2) Caring whether or not they do so.

[A True Kaniggit]

21 hours ago, Horza said:

Late to the party, but I feel like this is a big problem with a lot of pre-WW2 counterfactuals, in that it's really hard to think of a politically feasible pathway to a second Triple Entente. Not only would a renewed anti-German alliance require far more trust between all three powers than existed in the late 30s, but there's also the small issue of maintaning Polish sovereignty while obliging a massive Soviet offensive against Germany.

I agree. Pre-WW2 an alliance between the UK, France, and the Soviet Union is highly unlikely. Actually, I don't find it improbable that if Hitler had waited and let the USSR attack Europe first, he could've used the UK and France to help him fight the USSR.

[James Arryn]

On January 29, 2017 at 11:17 AM, Toth said:

Well, while Werthead's assessment was meant as a pointed simplification, it is an interesting question to be sure. Though I don't know what you expect for an answer. Every kind of offensive on the side of the allies would have been easier than tanking Blitzkrieg. The only question is how fast they would have been able to mobilize their troops (allowing the Germans to relocate their troops and fight back - after all, the disarmament of the treaty of Versailles was already completely erased). It is also dubious the Russians would have joined, because Stalin frankly wouldn't have cared enough and even though the non-aggression pact in the wake of the joint invasion of Poland wasn't made yet, the Soviets helped the Germans train their troops and Stalin hoped to cooperate with Hitler some more to help his own expansionist policy. I highly doubt he would have buried these thoughts over such small fries. So then it would have been only France and England. France, still sore about WW1 and aghast over the dismantling of the Versailles treaty might have spearheaded an intervention to contain Germany, but it would have likely only been localized and not a full out war.

If you want to theorize a bit, supporting Poland would have been the most sensible thing to do in 1939. When the German forces were occupied in the east, opening a second front to sandwich Germany early on would have been the best possible action for the Western Allies in my humble opinion. And this act of unabashed aggression would have been reason enough for full mobilization as well.

Bold simply isn't true. Stalin, along with Churchill, was one of the earliest to see the danger in Hitler/rearming, and was sending repeated overtures to Britain and France to form an alliance. Remember that the entire raison d'être of Nazis was to destroy communism, and Hitler's game plan of conquering the East for slave labour and natural resources was clearly laid out in MK, which Stalin had studied closely.

Problem was that to Britain and France the USSR wasn't much preferred to the Nazis (if at all) and so they preferred to aim the German gun everyone knew was being loaded towards Stalin (they'd read MK too). Hence Munich. Ideally those two would exhaust one another in a costly war and then the Western Powers could clean up. 

It was only after Munich when Stalin read the writing on the wall and then decided a deal with Hitler was better than no deal with anyone given Russia's military situation at the time, and that lead to Molotov-Ribbentrop. Then Stalin decided he and Hitler were soul brothers, and the rest went down as we know, but the idea that Stalin was indifferent to Hitler's threat or undesirous of containment alliances earlier is a 180 from the truth.