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International relations involves competing aspects of structure and agency. Sometimes structure prevents you from doing what you would wish to do and geography is part of that structure problem, just as it was for the USA. The US may have wanted peace in the world but it was geographically isolated and, in 1939, lacked the political will and military teeth to do anything. Britain and France hoped that a formal threat of war would dissuade Hitler. He called their bluff...but they followed through on their promise. That doesn't make their promises vacuous. It simply means there were limits on their ability to act.
Would you prefer that Britain and France gave Germany free rein in Poland without threatening to go to war? It could be easily argued that it was not in Britain's best interest to go to war in 1939. Britain was under no direct threat of attack from Germany. Avoiding war would have preserved the British Empire, continued trade, and saved hundreds of thousands of British lives, both military and civilian.
It's not a vacuous promise when it leads to the deaths of 384,000 soldiers and over 70,000 civilians from your population for a war which, arguably, wasn't in your national best interests. That's putting real, physical skin (and blood and bone) in the game.
Uhmm, no they could.. if they were in range.
Without disparaging those sacrifices at all, didn't the British leadership know that it wasn't able to take action? And what does that say about those promises?
As for what I wish they'd done instead, I would have liked to see both nations abandon the policy of appeasement much earlier ... before Germany got so powerful they were rendered impotent.
And I will now definitively leave off this derail. If you wish to discuss it further, open that thread, I'll happily partake.
Don't forget that Europe was slowly recovering from WW1, which, in part was so large because of cascading treaties. Britain and the US had no appetite for war, and would have happily given up smaller allies to avoid it.If the larger British forces in 1939 were unable to dissuade Hitler from his trajectory, what odds the far smaller, and less capable, forces available in 1938? If going to war in 1939 wasn't in Britain's best interests, doing so in 1938 when Britain was feverishly rebuilding its military would be downright foolhardy.
It seems the US gets a free pass because its military wasn't big enough or modern enough and yet you want Britain to act decisively against Germany under similar constraints?
Finally, you keep saying that the British didn't act. They declared war, moved over 150,000 troops plus air assets onto the continent, and undertook offensive operations within 24 hours. That is taking pretty powerful action. The fact that those actions didn't dissuade Germany or failed to prevent the overrunning of Poland doesn't mean the promises were empty. When America declared war on Japan, was it capable instantly of stopping further Japanese aggression? No...because it wasn't in a position to do so. Those conditions changed over time, and such was the case in Europe and other theaters as Britain continued the war it declared in September 1939.
Not sure a Stuka could carry a bomb large enough to sink a battleship. Cruiser or something smaller? Yes. Battleship? I'm not so sure.
The whole point of moving RN vessels into the Baltic would be to disrupt the German offensive in Poland. That would require getting close enough to ports/harbours to shell them. By default, that means the RN warship is within range of land-based air power.
I would further note that the Gladiator never equipped more than 8 squadrons at a time so the situation was even worse. The Gladiators were used as sort of advance operational trainers (my term) as when a squadron got Hurricanes or Spitfires, the Gladiators were moved to a Squadron that had Gauntlets (or older? they only built 246 Gauntlets and that included exports) and then the process repeated. The idea was that new monoplanes did not go straight to the Gauntlet squadrons. How well that worked in practice I don't know.All the others were equipped with Gladiators and Gauntlets.
Ahhh. Geography again!!!I would ask people to go to google maps and look at the Baltic and see how to get there past Demark.
View attachment 733498
That corner on the SE side is the border (present day) between Germany and Poland. There was a reason that Jackie Fisher built those absurd light armored cruisers (large light cruisers?) Normal WW I dreadnoughts and battlecruisers could not operate with freedom in parts of the Baltic near the German coast. British subs did get into Baltic on occasion. Those men had large pure brass spherical appendages.
Given the raids and exchanges both ways in WW I the North sea ports were fairly familiar to the RN. What may not have been known was well the shore defenses may have been rebuilt in the last few years.
International relations involves competing aspects of structure and agency. Sometimes structure prevents you from doing what you would wish to do and geography is part of that structure problem, just as it was for the USA. The US may have wanted peace in the world but it was geographically isolated and, in 1939, lacked the political will and military teeth to do anything. Britain and France hoped that a formal threat of war would dissuade Hitler. He called their bluff...but they followed through on their promise. That doesn't make their promises vacuous. It simply means there were limits on their ability to act.
Would you prefer that Britain and France gave Germany free rein in Poland without threatening to go to war?
It could be easily argued that it was not in Britain's best interest to go to war in 1939. Britain was under no direct threat of attack from Germany. Avoiding war would have preserved the British Empire, continued trade, and saved hundreds of thousands of British lives, both military and civilian.
It's not a vacuous promise when it leads to the deaths of 384,000 soldiers and over 70,000 civilians from your population for a war which, arguably, wasn't in your national best interests. That's putting real, physical skin (and blood and bone) in the game.
If the larger British forces in 1939 were unable to dissuade Hitler from his trajectory, what odds the far smaller, and less capable, forces available in 1938?
If going to war in 1939 wasn't in Britain's best interests, doing so in 1938 when Britain was feverishly rebuilding its military would be downright foolhardy.
It seems the US gets a free pass because its military wasn't big enough or modern enough and yet you want Britain to act decisively against Germany under similar constraints?
Finally, you keep saying that the British didn't act. They declared war, moved over 150,000 troops plus air assets onto the continent, and undertook offensive operations within 24 hours. That is taking pretty powerful action. The fact that those actions didn't dissuade Germany or failed to prevent the overrunning of Poland doesn't mean the promises were empty. When America declared war on Japan, was it capable instantly of stopping further Japanese aggression? No...because it wasn't in a position to do so. Those conditions changed over time, and such was the case in Europe and other theaters as Britain continued the war it declared in September 1939.
The German armed forces as well were smaller, less well-trained, and less well-equipped as well. The myth that Munich bought the Allies time ignores the fact that the Germans gained exactly the same amount of time, and they too put it to good use.
With Czechoslovakia, I'd expect much more of the French, given that they have the far bigger army. I'd expect both navies to impose a crippling blockade on Germany while Czech forces fight the German invasion and the French attack in the west.
I don't give America a pass for it military impotence, but much more on geography. No nation on earth at that time had the strength to project military power across thousands of miles of ocean on short notice. UK and France, on the other hand, are right there.
I didn't say they didn't act. I said they gave out empty promises that the Poles were fools to believe.
Indeed, and while people might like to 'beat up' on Chamberlain and cry "Appeasement!!", one has to also remember that neither Ramsay MacDonald or Stanley Baldwin before him were big advocates of re-arming either. More to the point though, they were dealing with the economic situation and a hope to avoid another major war so soon after the 1914 - 1918 conflict, which had already devastated one generation. In the case of Baldwin, I believe the following comment from him to Chamberlain in 1938 sums up well some of the thinking: "If you can secure peace, you may be cursed by a lot of hotheads but my word you will be blessed in Europe and by future generations".Don't forget that Europe was slowly recovering from WW1, which, in part was so large because of cascading treaties. Britain and the US had no appetite for war, and would have happily given up smaller allies to avoid it.
There are some nuances here. Firstly, the Luftwaffe had gained a lot of operational experience in Spain, starting in 1936. Their tactics were more advanced and they started WW2 with a larger cadre of better experienced aircrew who passed on their knowledge and skills to the aircrew coming out of the training schools.
I agree that Germany also had more time to re-equip but, for whatever reason, it hadn't initiated a full mobilization footing even by the summer of 1940. The net result is that the RAF gained ground over the Luftwaffe...and that is the key. The additional time helped Britain close the gap and stand a chance of prevailing.
I think it's fair to say that French military performance was poor from beginning to end. They didn't act decisively, they steadfastly refused to seize the initiative, and allowed themselves to be pushed into a reactive fight. However, we come back to the simple fact that nobody wanted another war that consumed Europe. It's also politically challenging to support a country if there are elements of truth to their claims of repression and mistreatment of your ethnic population.
In general, I can agree that France should have done more but, for whatever reason, France didn't want to go to war on its own. I suspect that's part of the reason why Paris allowed Britain to take the lead in driving what was seen as a successful negotiation at Munich (for everyone except the Czechoslovak country and people. Again, that was despicable in hindsight but was thought, at the time, to constitute a success in avoiding another war.
I'm not sure it was practical to impose a crippling naval blockade given that the Kriegsmarine already had 65 U-boats in service. Any blockading naval vessels would provide ample targets for the U-boats.
"Right there" as compared to the US. However, it's still a major challenge to do anything except attack Germany from the west. Getting forces into Czechoslovakia or Poland to defend the territorial integrity of those nations was impossible. So, while Britain and France were "right there", their ability to operate was severely constrained by geography. Distance is one form of obstacle. Geographic location is another. We can't wave a magic wand and expect Allied forces magically to appear in regions that lacked direct access.
S Shortround6 's post about the entry into the Baltic Sea is bang on the money. To get forces into Poland would require troopships to navigate along Germany's northern coastline and then land in Poland, all while under U-boat and air attack. It's simply not a practical proposition.
I think we're talking past each other. As I've pointed out, Britain and France did not guarantee the territorial integrity of Poland. They promised to support an independent Poland.
They couldn't deliver on the former for all the reasons mentioned and they never really tried. They could, and did, deliver on the latter, to include hosting the Polish Government in exile throughout the war.
More could have been done, perhaps, in September 1939 to distract German forces but, again, France didn't want to act without Britain and it took a month to get the BEF in place. The true blot on the Allies' treatment of Poland came at the end of the war and the sellout of veterans to the USSR.
They still had no way to bomb Britain.
Their CAS doctrine wasn't nearly so well-developed, either.
Of course no one wanted another war. They didn't really have a say in the matter though; Hitler forced one on them all the same.
1/3 at sea, 1/3 in transit, and 1/3 in refit leaves 22 on station -- with blockade lines between Scapa and Norway (400 miles across) and the Channel, and one could make the argument that you're drawing a deadly threat to merchant traffic onto warships which are equipped to sink them.
The French army had no such impediment. The Germans had few troops in the west, the West Wall was not complete and was regarded as insufficient by the Germans themselves.
I'm sure we are -- for example, while you decry "quibbling" over adjectives, you engage in a curious reading of both France's pact with Czechoslovakia, and Britain's with Poland, the latter of which called for "immediate assistance".
You think the Brits delivered an independent Poland?! At what point?
Right. As Alexander Cadogan wrote at the time of the pact's signing, "Naturally, our guarantee does not give any help to Poland. It can be said that it was cruel to Poland, even cynical". It goes without saying that I agree: it was a cynical ploy to buy time -- as was the surrender at Munich a year before.