But for the Anglo-French declaration of war, Hitler and Stalin would have carved up Eastern Europe, and would probably have gone to war, though that is not at all certain.
But what's your account for what would have happened if Britain hadn't entered the war in 1939? For the claim that it was a strategic blunder to be properly convincing, you need a counterfactual where things likely would have been better (either for Britain or for humanity as a whole). You've said that without a German declaration of war on the US, the holocaust would likely have been worse, but that surely applies at least as much in a world where Britain and the US never seriously enter the European war at all.
Another possibility that I think needs to be taken seriously is that, without setting itself firmly against fascism, Britain ends up becoming more fascistic itself. There were plenty of influential admirers of Hitler among the pre-war British elites; if the Nazis overrun Poland and then put the USSR to the sword, its easy to imagine a narrative of 'see how Mr Hitler has demonstrated the way to smash socialism and deal with the lesser races' taking hold.
I don't think your thesis is correct. While I agree that making debates over WWII strategy about modern race relations is silly, I don't think Britain going to war in 1939 was. It had been increasingly obvious for at least the previous 2-3 years that Hitler was on an expansionist tear, and that was inevitably going to bring him into conflict with Britain, whose foreign policy for centuries had been focused on making sure that no one European power was strong enough to have uncontested mastery of Europe and build a navy capable of threatening Britain. Diplomatic attempts to contain him had repeatedly failed. Sure, Hitler didn't want war with Britain, but neither did the Kaiser, and in both cases, they made decisions that put them on a collision course with the British. If nothing else, the master of Europe really, really cannot stand having a hostile power astride the sea lanes. And going to war in 1939 meant that they could work closely with the French ahead of the German invasion. That didn't work, but I don't think that was because of low morale on the French side from going to war to defend Poland. France had other issues.
>Her navy couldn’t realistically navigate the Danish Straits under German aerial and naval attack, nor could Britain project force inland. Britain never undertook a serious military effort to defend Poland.
This is an extremely silly standard. The Baltic is a terrible place to operate warships in an era with airplanes, submarines and mines. It wasn't really practical in WWI, either, Fisher's efforts to the contrary notwithstanding. (There's a whole rabbit hole there I won't get into now.) The RN could and did cut Germany off from the wider world, as it did in WWI and to other European powers in every previous war.
>Ultimately, Britain was only saved because Hitler inexplicably declared war on the U.S. after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Without that, America would have focused on the Pacific, leaving Britain and the USSR starved of vital resources.
I'm not sure this is true. The US was fighting an undeclared naval war with Germany before Pearl Harbor, and Lend-Lease was signed in 1941. Yes, Germany not declaring war on the US would have made things harder, but it's not like Japan and Germany weren't already pretty close, and the British were going to be allies against Japan anyway. Even if we weren't fighting directly, giving them a lot of war material is easy to sell, because some of it is used against Japan and the rest frees up forces to defeat the Japanese. And FDR really wanted the US into the European war, and I suspect he would have gotten it some time in 1942 regardless. (I am not saying this was a good thing, to be clear. But an evaluation of FDR is not something I want to get into now.)
Thanks for engaging! Do you agree that Britain was unable to defend Poland and knew this at the time?
It’s certainly possible Hitler would eventually have attacked France. That would have been a more propitious time for war, because it would have unified France in a way that fight to preserve Poland never did.
Obviously they weren't able to defend Poland and knew it. I don't think that's a good reason not to go to war. If you beat Germany, then their conquest of Poland gets undone, which is worse than it not happening at all, but better than it just going through. And as I said, pretty much everyone thought war was inevitable by then, so why not go now, before Hitler has a chance to digest Poland and add its resources to his empire?
And re France, I am reading your thesis as "France fell because of disunity caused by the decision to go to war on behalf of Poland". I am not a scholar of the Battle of France (and there's a book I have and need to read on that) but I know a bit more than the surface-level, and don't think that holds up. France had a lot of structural issues that aren't just "bad morale" (the best source of information the French high command had was often the British ambassador) and the Germans got absurdly lucky that Hitler's wild plan worked out as well as it did. A reasonable strategist would have predicted things to look a lot more like WWI than they did, and Britain and France v Germany isn't an obviously unwinnable war.
(It really should be emphasized how lucky Germany got in the first year or so of the war. I have done quite a bit of research into the Norway campaign in April 1940 and it's astonishing how often they got away with stuff that is obviously insane to anyone familiar with the later war.)
The “if you beat Germany” part is really dicey. Russian support was critical to the allies in World War One, Paris might have fallen quite early if German troops had not been pinned down on the Eastern Front. Italy also switched sides between the two world wars.
In any event, British strategy should have emphasized maintaining unified French support. France was happy to fight a defensive war, and Britain could have aided her in that event. Many Frenchmen simply did not want to go to war over Poland, they were pacifists who viewed Verdun as a French holocaust, to be avoided at almost any price. They needed better reasons to go to war than defending a country that could not be defended. Also, entering a war where your side is guaranteed to be crushed in the first battle is tactically dubious. Watching Poland get crushed was demoralizing and made western soldiers feel impotent.
Waiting before declaring war would better exploit the possibility that Germany and Russia would come to blows, which would have served two western interests at once.
WWI is not WWII, and the Germany of 1939 was not the Germany of 1914. Also, Italy didn't enter the war until after France was already falling apart.
I've looked a bit into French morale in 1939/1940. In To Lose a Battle, Alastair Horne gives about three pages on French morale issues, and "lack of war aims" is a short paragraph, focusing more on the lack of anything after the fall of Poland than on the silliness of going to war for Poland. I'd say based on his account that the bigger issues were (a) structural problems in French society and (b) the Phony War. Waiting to declare war would probably not have helped with the first problem, and while it would have helped with the complacency bred by the second, if Germany attacked, France would have been less mobilized and things might well have gone worse.
First, it is often surprisingly hard to evaluate the effectiveness of an army ahead of time. We got a graphic demonstration of this three years ago, when the general consensus was that the Russians were going to steamroll the Ukrainians, and they didn't.
Secondly, yes, the French Army was deeply flawed. I agree, but I think you're pointing in the wrong cause. And they weren't much planning on offensive, anyway. They'd learned from Verdun to fight on the defensive, which frankly was probably not a great lesson.
Third, where did I suggest they should have been put on the offensive?
Interesting. I don't know enough to have an opinion, but I find the ideas interesting.
But for the Anglo-French declaration of war, Hitler and Stalin would have carved up Eastern Europe, and would probably have gone to war, though that is not at all certain.
Interesting essay.
But what's your account for what would have happened if Britain hadn't entered the war in 1939? For the claim that it was a strategic blunder to be properly convincing, you need a counterfactual where things likely would have been better (either for Britain or for humanity as a whole). You've said that without a German declaration of war on the US, the holocaust would likely have been worse, but that surely applies at least as much in a world where Britain and the US never seriously enter the European war at all.
Another possibility that I think needs to be taken seriously is that, without setting itself firmly against fascism, Britain ends up becoming more fascistic itself. There were plenty of influential admirers of Hitler among the pre-war British elites; if the Nazis overrun Poland and then put the USSR to the sword, its easy to imagine a narrative of 'see how Mr Hitler has demonstrated the way to smash socialism and deal with the lesser races' taking hold.
I don't think your thesis is correct. While I agree that making debates over WWII strategy about modern race relations is silly, I don't think Britain going to war in 1939 was. It had been increasingly obvious for at least the previous 2-3 years that Hitler was on an expansionist tear, and that was inevitably going to bring him into conflict with Britain, whose foreign policy for centuries had been focused on making sure that no one European power was strong enough to have uncontested mastery of Europe and build a navy capable of threatening Britain. Diplomatic attempts to contain him had repeatedly failed. Sure, Hitler didn't want war with Britain, but neither did the Kaiser, and in both cases, they made decisions that put them on a collision course with the British. If nothing else, the master of Europe really, really cannot stand having a hostile power astride the sea lanes. And going to war in 1939 meant that they could work closely with the French ahead of the German invasion. That didn't work, but I don't think that was because of low morale on the French side from going to war to defend Poland. France had other issues.
>Her navy couldn’t realistically navigate the Danish Straits under German aerial and naval attack, nor could Britain project force inland. Britain never undertook a serious military effort to defend Poland.
This is an extremely silly standard. The Baltic is a terrible place to operate warships in an era with airplanes, submarines and mines. It wasn't really practical in WWI, either, Fisher's efforts to the contrary notwithstanding. (There's a whole rabbit hole there I won't get into now.) The RN could and did cut Germany off from the wider world, as it did in WWI and to other European powers in every previous war.
>Ultimately, Britain was only saved because Hitler inexplicably declared war on the U.S. after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Without that, America would have focused on the Pacific, leaving Britain and the USSR starved of vital resources.
I'm not sure this is true. The US was fighting an undeclared naval war with Germany before Pearl Harbor, and Lend-Lease was signed in 1941. Yes, Germany not declaring war on the US would have made things harder, but it's not like Japan and Germany weren't already pretty close, and the British were going to be allies against Japan anyway. Even if we weren't fighting directly, giving them a lot of war material is easy to sell, because some of it is used against Japan and the rest frees up forces to defeat the Japanese. And FDR really wanted the US into the European war, and I suspect he would have gotten it some time in 1942 regardless. (I am not saying this was a good thing, to be clear. But an evaluation of FDR is not something I want to get into now.)
Thanks for engaging! Do you agree that Britain was unable to defend Poland and knew this at the time?
It’s certainly possible Hitler would eventually have attacked France. That would have been a more propitious time for war, because it would have unified France in a way that fight to preserve Poland never did.
Obviously they weren't able to defend Poland and knew it. I don't think that's a good reason not to go to war. If you beat Germany, then their conquest of Poland gets undone, which is worse than it not happening at all, but better than it just going through. And as I said, pretty much everyone thought war was inevitable by then, so why not go now, before Hitler has a chance to digest Poland and add its resources to his empire?
And re France, I am reading your thesis as "France fell because of disunity caused by the decision to go to war on behalf of Poland". I am not a scholar of the Battle of France (and there's a book I have and need to read on that) but I know a bit more than the surface-level, and don't think that holds up. France had a lot of structural issues that aren't just "bad morale" (the best source of information the French high command had was often the British ambassador) and the Germans got absurdly lucky that Hitler's wild plan worked out as well as it did. A reasonable strategist would have predicted things to look a lot more like WWI than they did, and Britain and France v Germany isn't an obviously unwinnable war.
(It really should be emphasized how lucky Germany got in the first year or so of the war. I have done quite a bit of research into the Norway campaign in April 1940 and it's astonishing how often they got away with stuff that is obviously insane to anyone familiar with the later war.)
The “if you beat Germany” part is really dicey. Russian support was critical to the allies in World War One, Paris might have fallen quite early if German troops had not been pinned down on the Eastern Front. Italy also switched sides between the two world wars.
In any event, British strategy should have emphasized maintaining unified French support. France was happy to fight a defensive war, and Britain could have aided her in that event. Many Frenchmen simply did not want to go to war over Poland, they were pacifists who viewed Verdun as a French holocaust, to be avoided at almost any price. They needed better reasons to go to war than defending a country that could not be defended. Also, entering a war where your side is guaranteed to be crushed in the first battle is tactically dubious. Watching Poland get crushed was demoralizing and made western soldiers feel impotent.
Waiting before declaring war would better exploit the possibility that Germany and Russia would come to blows, which would have served two western interests at once.
WWI is not WWII, and the Germany of 1939 was not the Germany of 1914. Also, Italy didn't enter the war until after France was already falling apart.
I've looked a bit into French morale in 1939/1940. In To Lose a Battle, Alastair Horne gives about three pages on French morale issues, and "lack of war aims" is a short paragraph, focusing more on the lack of anything after the fall of Poland than on the silliness of going to war for Poland. I'd say based on his account that the bigger issues were (a) structural problems in French society and (b) the Phony War. Waiting to declare war would probably not have helped with the first problem, and while it would have helped with the complacency bred by the second, if Germany attacked, France would have been less mobilized and things might well have gone worse.
the french armies in the meuse broke and ran very shortly after encountering the enemy. thinking they had any offensive capability is delusional.
First, it is often surprisingly hard to evaluate the effectiveness of an army ahead of time. We got a graphic demonstration of this three years ago, when the general consensus was that the Russians were going to steamroll the Ukrainians, and they didn't.
Secondly, yes, the French Army was deeply flawed. I agree, but I think you're pointing in the wrong cause. And they weren't much planning on offensive, anyway. They'd learned from Verdun to fight on the defensive, which frankly was probably not a great lesson.
Third, where did I suggest they should have been put on the offensive?