179: Can We Fight Somewhere Else?

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Join British and French leaders as they spend roughly 8 months trying desperately to fight a war anywhere but eastern France.

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Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 179 - The Fall of France - Can we Fight Somewhere Else? This week a big thanks goes out to Mat, deadballing, and Matt for choosing to support the podcast by becoming members, you can find out more over at historyofthesecnodworldwar.com/members. A core goal of the British and French leaders during the months of the Phoney war was to investigate the possibility of building up a coalition against Germany in Eastern Europe, or at the very least trying to find a way to spread the war away from France, to create a situation in which Germany would commit its military resources to something, anything, other than an attack into France in the spring of 1940. Almost all of these discussions, with one very important outlier, would not lead to any real developments in the war. In Eastern Europe the nations almost universally decided to stay out of the war in early 1940, a decision that for many of them was completely logical. War would eventually come to the Balkans, but instead of the war spreading due to the creation of some kind of anti-German coalition it was instead as a result of some nations joining the German cause and then helping the Germans and Italians in their goals of conquest. In Northern Europe, another possible area of conflict, the two Western Nations would build some plans, and then they would not go so well as we discussed in some detail during the Norwegian episodes. The final area that the British and French considered expanding the war into was the Soviet Union, by bombing the Soviet Union even though that meant bringing them into the war on the side of Germany. This obviously did not happen, but it is certainly a “what if” scenario that would have drastically changed the course of not just the war but also the history that followed. The second half of this episode will cover some of the preparations being made by the Western Allies for the war during the Phoney War period, because one of the major reasons that they were never able to create a Second Front is because they did not have the resources to actually commit to a real campaign outside of France. There were really good reasons for this lack of resources, and they would only start to address them before the German invasion. Also, there would be a leadership change in Paris in March 1940, primarily due to the handling of the war up to that point in time.

First we start with the British and French desire to find another theater of operations, which in some way saw its roots in concerns among the leaders of both nations that the policy that they had been pursuing of a long war was perhaps not working out as well as they expected. This feeling was felt very acutely by French leaders, and they were concerned that Germany was only going to go stronger which meant that the longer they waited to start fighting the worse off they would be. The result of this growing doubt was a series of investigations and conversations concerning a military operation somewhere on the map of Europe. For the overall course of the war these conversations would be important, not because the operations would happen because almost none of them would, but instead because it shows us where the Allied leaders were putting their focus during this time. This idea of finding another theater to operate in would be continued throughout most of the war for the Western Allies, and the same types of arguments that were used in London and Paris in late 1939 and early 1940 would be the same types of conversations that would lead to the invasion of North Africa and Italy after the American entry into the conflict. The most discussed theater of operations in 1939 was the Balkans and eastern Europe more generally. During the first months of the war there were constant conversations among the Supreme War Council and other committees about what was happening in the Balkans, the viewpoints of the nations in the region, and the possibility of bringing some or all of them into the war against Germany. One of the main advocates for a Balkan attack was General Weygand, who would later take command of all French forces in France after the invasion but at the start of the war he was the commander of all French forces in the Eastern Mediterranean. Weygand’s theory was that if the Allies put together a strong armored and mobile force, it did not have to be large but instead focused on the types of equipment that the Allies had that the Balkan countries were short of, then they could convince the Balkan countries to join in an attack with upwards of 100 divisions. There are a whole episode worth of problems with this plan, but just to name maybe the two most important: Weygand did not have a plan for actually getting that kind of force into the Eastern Mediterranean without alerting the Germans and he did not have a plan to get the Balkan nations to work together. If he wanted to reach 100 divisions he would need them all working together, and that was basically never going to happen. Chamberlain and the British were also very concerned that any aggressive move in the region would just bring Italy into the war on the side of Germany, with Italy maintaining its neutrality in the conflict until June 1940 in early 1940 the British and the Royal Navy really wanted to try and keep Italy out of the conflict.

Another area that was discussed at the same time as the Balkans was an operation in Scandinavia, particularly targeting the iron ore trade that was in place between Sweden and Germany. We will not spend too much time on these ideas, but they are important enough to overall Allied plans during the Phoney War that they are worth at least mentioning again. The basic idea was that the British and French would use the Soviet attack into Finland during the Winter War as an excuse to move troops into the region, with the goal of gaining Norwegian support for the troops to be dropped off at Narvik and then moved to Finland from there. Even if Norway did not allow this to happen, then the Allies were willing to continue the operation, even if it meant the violation of Norwegian neutrality. This operation was once again supported and criticized by different groups within each government. On the French side General Gamelin, the commander of French forces in France, used his considerable influence to slow the overall preparations for any operation in Northern Europe. Some of this was based on Gamelin’s concerns that such an operation would not be successful, but also there was some level of greed happening because it would be from Gamelin’s command that the troops for such an operation would have to be drawn, reducing his forces and his power. The operation had more support in Britain, with both Churchill in his role of First Lord of the Admiralty and the Chief of the Imperial General Staff General Ironside both supporting the operation by early 1940. This quote from Ironside in December 1939, when discussing the possibility of an attack in Scandinavia, is perhaps one of the best possible criticisms of the overall lack of Allied action during the Phoney War, he would say ’time is no use to us if we are not making use of it, I am sure the Germans are making full use of it and we appear to be buoying ourselves with false hopes of the war coming to an end.’ The preparations that were underway for the Norwegian expedition would be discovered by the Germans, and just as the British and French were finally ready to put their plans into place the the German invasion would begin. The delay in the operation, and then the course of operations in Norway are perhaps the best example of why it is hard to see how any of these other theaters ever could have been a viable area of operations for the Allies, they simply were unwilling or unable to commit the resources to make it happen. In early 1940 the Allies just did not have the resources necessary to both defend against a possible German attack in France and operate somewhere else in Europe, and because of that all of their plans for possibly opening a second front were largely theoretical because it would have just required more resources than they were willing to commit. And speaking of things that would have required more resources than the Allies expected, they also discussed attacking the Soviet Union.

Perhaps the most interesting set of conversations, particularly as things would develop throughout the course of the Second World War was, were the very real discussions that would occur between British and French leaders about launching a strategic bombing campaign of the Soviet Union in 1940. In retrospect the idea that the western Allies would willingly start a war with the Soviet Union seems borderline absurd. They were struggling to find a way to deal with the military power of Germany, and then they were going to add that of the Soviet Union, but they did at least have a few different reasons even if some of them were based on incorrect information. The first reason that a war with the Soviet Union might be started was around the idea that France and Britain were trying to protect neutral nations from the aggressions of Germany. This had been a major point for why the two nations claimed to provide their guarantee to Poland, to protect them from German aggression. But of course the Soviet Union had also invaded Poland, and had also started a war with Finland. In October 1939 a report would be written by the Chiefs of Staff Committee, an advisory body made up of the Chiefs of the Staffs of the various British military arms. In this report they would discuss whether or not the British should more directly intervene in Finland, which would almost certainly lead to an open war between the Soviet Union and the western Allies. A major topic of conversation in the report was the views of other neutral nations towards the British and French, with this quote being a pretty good representation of why: “At present the sincerity of France and Great Britain is being questioned, and force is being added to German propaganda, particularly in Italy and Spain, because we have not declared war on Russia in spite of the fact that she has already interfered with the liberty of small states in much the same way as Germany. […] There is, therefore, some danger that, if we fail to stand up to Russia, we may lose the sympathy of neutral states to an extent which may have dangerous military implications.” The report would end with the firm recommendation not to take action though, due to concerns that from a military perspective there simply were not the resources required to add another nation to the list of the enemies. For the duration of the Winter War the idea of attacking the Soviet Union to aid Finland would continue although support for the idea would ebb and flow based on events. In most cases there was more support for such an action among the political bodies of both nations, with Gamelin claiming in January 1940 that the French parliament was demanding action against the Soviets. But that did not mean that there were not military supporters of the operation as well, with General Weygand again being firmly on the side of an attack, although this was again partially due to the fact that it would be Weygand’s command that would grow to accommodate the new objectives. Weygand would say in a letter to Gamelin that “I believe it is of the utmost importance to break the back of the U.S.S.R. in Finland… and elsewhere.” It might be good at this point to re-emphasize that there were sizable groups in both Britain and France that still considered Communism to be the real enemy that they should be fighting against, and so there was always some level of support for operations against the Soviet Union. The problem with any scheme to try and aid Finland goes back to the challenges of any action against Germany away from France, a lack of resources. Launching any kind of land campaign required the men and material that were also so urgently needed in France. You may also be wondering why they believed that any of this would help in the war with Germany, other than among the public opinion of small neutral nations, and that brings us to the final reason that war with the Soviet Union came so close to happening: oil. The Long War idea that the British and French had entered into the war pursuing was based on the premise that the German economy was balanced on a knife’s edge. German rearmament had been pushing too fast and too hard and the German economy was on the verge of collapse, or at least that was the hope in London and Paris. But then the war started and that economic collapse did not appear to be eminent, and in fact the German economy was performing even better than it was before the start of the war. This prompted attempts to find a reason why, with Swedish iron ore being one possible cause, which would result in the entire Norwegian adventure. Another major contributing factor that was identified was Russian oil. After their collaboration in the dismantling of Poland Germany and Russia had signed an economic agreement that would see Russian raw materials including oil shipped to Germany in return for finished good and machine tools. To try and reduce the amount of oil making its way to Germany a major bombing operation would begin to be discussed which would target the Russian oil industry around Baku in modern day Azerbaijan. This operation would very quickly gain high level support from both French political and military leaders. On the British side there was also strong support among some key leaders and even from the RAF, whose planes would need to execute the mission. During the first 2 months of 1940 plans very rapidly came together with the basic idea being that 12 squadrons of bombers would be transferred to the middle east and would operate primarily out of French airfields in Syria. They would then embark on a 2 to 3 month bombing campaign against the oil production facilities around Baku, with the belief that this could reduce the oil production of the region by up to 50%. One of the things I find very interesting about this idea is the fundamental misunderstanding of the leaders of Britain and France about the fragility of the German economy. The oil flow from the Caucasus was important, but removing it would not have caused a German collapse, or the collapse of the Soviet Union as some of the most optimistic reports seemed to indicate. This mistake was rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the resiliency of economies in the 1940s, a resiliency that would be put on display many times over the years that followed as nations were able to rapidly recover from invasions and strategic bombing campaigns that would have been considered fatal by the planners in 1940. There was also of course just an extreme optimism about the capabilities of the British and French bombers against the oil production facilities around Baku. Assuming they were able to actually find the target, not a guarantee in 1940, the amount of bombs that 12 squadrons of medium bombers could drop, even if they made a maximum effort for 3 months, probably would have barely put a dent in the production of oil in the region. Due to the distributed nature of oil production, and the large footprint of even relatively concentrated facilities like refineries, they would prove to be very difficult to actual destroy through strategic bombing campaigns. For example there were major late war efforts to destroy synthetic oil production in Germany and the refinement of oil in various areas of Europe, these were bombing raids with hundreds of late war heavy bombers, B-17s, B-24s, Halifax’s and Lancasters. One of my favorite statistics is that just the bomb load of a Lancaster was larger than the maximum takeoff weight of some of the British and French medium bombers in 1940. It would not be the feasibility of serious damage that would cause the raids to not occur though, and it would instead be just general concern for starting a war with the Soviet Union. This nagging problem would continue to slow preparations throughout early 1940 even though preparations were being made in Syria to receive the bombers. There would be a burst of action when Reynaud replaced Daladier as French Prime Minister in March 1940, an event that will be discussed in just a moment. But the preparations would take time, and the timeline that Weygand communicated to Paris is that they would not be ready in Syria to begin receiving bombers until the end of May or early June. In retrospect the entire concept of willfully attacking the Soviet Union is absurd given the incredible military power that would be on display on the Eastern Front after the German invasion of 1941. And so the French and British were probably lucky that they were saved from such a mistake by the German invasion, because adding the Soviet Union to their list of enemies probably would have resulted in even more military disasters in 1940 and after.

While France and Britain would not end up attacking the Soviet Union, the effects of their lack of action would be felt in France during March 1914. Daladier had led the French government into war, but from the very earliest moments of the war his position had not been strong. He had attempted to form a coalition government, much like what the French government in 1914 had done at the start of the war, to ensure full support for the government across the entire range of political opinion in France. This effort failed, with the leaders on the right and left of French politics being simply unwilling to work together. On the left the Socialists insisted that Leon Blum be their representative in any coalition, but on the right the conservative leader Louis Marin refused to join any government with Blum. With this effort a failure Daladier would continue on leading the government until March 1940. The end of the Winter War, with Finland forced to sign very harsh terms with the Soviet Union, would bring renewed pressure on Daladier due to the desire of many leading French politicians for action against the Soviet Union. On the 14th in the French Senate Daladier would be heavily criticized for the lack of French action in the Winter War, with the belief that France should have done something to come to Finland’s aid. Daladier would attempt to defend his decisions, stating that it was the British who were to blame as they had resisted any unified action, or had at least delayed such actions enough to not be useful. These debates would then spill out to the Chamber of Deputies in the days that followed, with the two French politicians, Pierre Laval in the Senante and Pierre-Etienne Flandin in the Chamber leading the charge. It is worth mentioning that in the case of both of those politicians, they had never really supported France’s war against Germany, and had opposed the declarations of war in September 1939. They instead believed that France should be focused on fighting the Soviet Union. Daladier would lose a vote of confidence in the Chamber of Deputies, and would then refuse to attempt to form a new government. The French President would ask Paul Reynaud to take on the position of Prime Minister. Reynaud was known for his strong, and persistent, advocacy for greater investment in the French military in the years before the war. His first move was to try and form a government of National Union, but he would succumb to the pressure from the right and would not invite Leon Blum which made support form the Socialists a bit shakey. This meant that the support for the government was slim, and in fact on the first day of the new government there would be a vote of confidence that Reynaud would win by just a single vote. And through all of this, the government that Reynaud had created exhibited the quintessential trait of Third Republic governments, it had the predecessor at Prime Minister on the cabinet. Daladier, even though he was no longer Prime Minister still enjoyed strong support among a group of powerful political leaders. Reynaud needed those leaders to support his government, and the only way to do that was to bring Daladier into the government as Minister of National Defense. That is right, Daladier, whose government had fallen due to his handling of the war, would then be put into the position of Minister of National Defense. This meant that many of his policies and decisions would continue, including his strong support for General Gamelin at the head of the French Army. Reynaud wanted to remove Gamelin, believing that he was unfit for the job, but Gamelin and Daladier were very close. It would only be when it was too late for France that Reynaud would be able to change out Gamelin for another General.

In London the Chamberlain government was under similar pressure due to the conduct of the war up until that point. The tipping point would prove to be the handling of the campaign in Norway, with a spirited debate occurring in the Commons on May 7th. Duff Cooper, a strong critic of Chamberlain and having resigned from his position of First Lord of the Admiralty in protest after the Munich Agreement had been signed, would say “Again and again we have met in this House, sometimes summoned suddenly in an emergency, always to record a setback, a disaster, always to listen to the disappointment, the astonishment and the surprise of the Prime Minister.” On the 8th the debate would spill into a vote of confidence in Chamberlain, which he would win, but with far from unanimous support, with the final vote total being 281 to 200. It would be the end of the Chamberlain government, although a replacement would not be found until May 10th. There were two possible successors, Lord Halifax and Winston Churchill, with both men appealing to slight different groups within British politics. Churchill would eventually get the job, starting on May 10th, but only as the head of a broad coalition government. The War Cabinet, the five most powerful men in Britain, would have Churchill, two Labor leaders Attlee and Greenwood, Halifax as Foreign Secretary, and Chamberlain. Much like Reynaud, Churchill could not ignore the strong support that Chamberlain maintained among a large minority of the British government. Churchill also largely kept Chamberlain’s ministers in position more broadly, with around 2/3 of minister still in their same positions after the new government was in power. By the time that Churchill was in position the German invasion had already begun, leading to a very hot and heavy first few weeks as Prime Minister. On the 13th, as the German invasion was rolling through the Low Countries and through France Churchill would deliver the first of his quite famous orations before Parliament, at one point saying “You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: Victory. Victory at all costs—Victory in spite of all terror—Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.” But before Churchill gave that speech there had been a plan for resistance against Germany, and it had failed, next episode will discuss the details of that plan.