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by Norman Ridley.
Hardback (6.4×9.5 inches). 173 pages. 2022.
Subtitle: The Intelligence Failure That Led to WW2
Covering the 1930s, British Prime Ministers consistently failed to appreciate that a psychopath like Hitler never made a deal he intended to keep. By the time Chamberlain waved a piece of paper regarding Czechoslovakia, Hitler was already planning to grab the country. Not that the French were going to do anything — they planned on sitting behind the Maginot Line.
A big part of the British assumption in 1933 was that a war would not start for 10 years (p19). While Germany rearmed, the British did not and the French built fortifications. The British failed to accurately judge the capability of the German armed forces versus the bombast of Hitler’s claims.
What they should have paid attention to is the 1934 demand by Hitler that the military AND the civil servants take a personal loyalty oath to Hitler (p25). This step put Germany on the path to war — a war Hitler wrote about in Mein Kampf.
The rest was Hitler’s brinksmanship of always threatening a war and he got away with it due to the political failure of the West to stand up to him. Opposing German entry into the Rhineland would have, at least in hindsight, fomented a change of German government. While the Anschluss of Austria was too far away in Western opinion, Czechoslovakia might have been a different story.
The Czechs had an army, armaments industry to support it, fortifications facing Germany, and a defense treaty with the West. In late June 1938, the German General Staff held wargames about the invasion of Czechoslovakia. The result of a Western attack on Germany in support of the Czechs was a defeat of Germany (p101).
That is assuming that the West had invested in offensive and defensive military capabilities.
The book contains 16 black and white photos.
The moral of history is that caving to demands from a blackmailing bully only causes greater problems later. No one in the West wanted a repeat of WWI, but by abandoning allies, failing to match growing power, and failing to act in defense of allies, the West got a war much worse than WWI.
Enjoyed it.
— Reviewed by Russ Lockwood
